Chapter 2
Brooke’s words hit me harder than the heat.
“The fire wasn’t an accident.”
My father coughed violently, clutching the edge of the piano.
“Brooke, not now.”
I looked at him through the smoke.
“Then when?”
The ceiling cracked again.
My radio screamed in my ear.
“Commander, eighty seconds.”
I grabbed my mother first and clipped her harness to the rescue line.
She stared at me like the smoke had created a ghost.
“You’re alive,” she whispered.
“I was never dead.”
The words hurt more than I expected.
I signaled the helicopter.
“First extraction coming up.”
My mother rose through the broken window into the smoke-black sky, sobbing my name.
I turned back.
Brooke had both hands over the respirator, eyes locked on mine.
“Ethan, I forged the academy letter.”
My father shouted, “Shut up!”
There it was.
Six years of exile spoken in five burning words.
My hand tightened around the second harness.
“I know.”
Brooke flinched.
“I didn’t mean for them to throw you out.”
“You let them.”
Tears cut pale lines through soot on her face.
“Dad told me to.”
The room went still.
Even the flames seemed to pause.
My father’s face hardened.
“She was a child.”
“She was eighteen,” I said.
“And you were her father.”
He looked away.
I clipped Brooke into the line.
Before I sent her up, she grabbed my wrist.
“The tower plans were altered. Illegal wiring. Blocked fire exits. I signed off because Dad said investors were coming.”
My father staggered toward us.
“Ethan, don’t listen to her.”
Brooke shook her head wildly.
“The fire started in the records room. Someone wanted the inspection files gone.”
I looked at my father.
“Who?”
His silence answered first.
Then the penthouse intercom crackled, somehow still alive.
A man’s voice came through the smoke.
“Richard, if your family survives, remind Ethan he was never expelled.”
My blood went cold.
The voice continued.
“He was removed before he could learn the Academy scholarship money was stolen.”
May you like
My father collapsed to his knees.
And Brooke whispered, “It was your money, Ethan. Dad used it to build Aurora Tower.”
