I fell to my knees in the slush, ruining my Italian suit. “The song,” I whispered. “Where did you hear that song?”
She shivered, pulling the coat tighter.
“Mama sings it. When she cries.”
“Mama?” I grabbed her shoulders, perhaps too roughly. “Where is your Mama?”
The girl’s lip trembled.
She reached into her dirty coat pocket and pulled out an object. It wasn’t a weapon. It was a platinum watch.
My platinum watch. The one I had given Elena on our wedding day, engraved with the coordinates of where we met. “She told me,” the girl whispered, tears cutting tracks through the grime on her face.
“She said if the Bad Men come, find the King in the Glass Tower. Show him this. Tell him… tell him Harry is alive.”
Harry.
My son. The world tilted on its axis. They weren’t dead.
They were here. In London. “Who are the Bad Men?” I asked, my voice breaking.
“Him,” she pointed a trembling finger over my shoulder. I spun around. Julian was standing in the doorway of the loading dock.
He wasn’t smiling. And in his hand, he held a silenced pistol. “I really wish you hadn’t come down here, Arthur,” Julian sighed, adjusting his cufflinks.
“It’s going to be so messy explaining a mugging gone wrong.”
“Run!” I roared. I threw a heavy metal trash can at Julian. Phut.
The bullet sparked against the brick wall inches from my head. I grabbed the girl’s hand and we sprinted into the labyrinth of service alleys. I was a billionaire who spent his days in boardrooms, not running for his life, but adrenaline is a powerful drug.
“What’s your name?” I gasped as we turned a corner, sliding on the ice. “Mia,” she panted. “I’m not your kid.
I’m Harry’s friend. We live in the tunnels.”
“The tunnels?”
“Under the Tube. The old stations.”
We didn’t have a choice.
We could hear Julian shouting orders into a radio. He had a private security team. Mercenaries.
We scrambled over a fence and down an embankment toward an old maintenance entrance for the London Underground. “Why?” I asked Mia as we pried open the rusted grate. “Why did Julian do this?”
“Mama said you were blind,” Mia said bluntly as we dropped into the darkness.
“She found papers. Julian was selling your tech to warlords. He sabotaged the boat.
She swam to shore with Harry, but she knew if she came back, Julian would kill you all. So she became a ghost.”
My heart shattered. For five years, I had mourned them.
For five years, Elena had been living in the sewers of London, protecting our son from the snake I called a brother. We navigated the abandoned tunnels by the light of my dying smartphone. Rats scurried away from ou
r footsteps.
The smell of damp earth and rust was suffocating. “Here,” Mia whispered. It was a makeshift camp in a forgotten alcove of a disused Victorian station.
A tent made of plastic sheets. A small fire burning in a barrel. A woman stood up.
She was thin, her hair gray and matted, wearing rags layered for warmth. But her posture was unbroken. “Elena,” I choked out.
She dropped the piece of wood she was holding. “Arthur?”
We collided. It wasn’t a hug; it was a desperate collision of two souls who thought the other was lost.
I wept into her dirty hair. “Daddy?”
A small boy, about five years old, peeked out from the tent. He had my nose.
I reached for him, but a deafening BOOM shook the tunnel. Dust rained down on us. “They found us,” Elena said, her eyes hard.
“Julian tracked your phone, Arthur. You idiot.”
She was right. I was still the naive billionaire.
“We need to move,” I said, looking around. “Is there another way out?”
“The ventilation shaft,” Elena pointed. “It comes out near the Royal Opera House.
But it’s a tight squeeze.”
“Go,” I commanded. “Take the kids.”
“And you?”
“I’m going to buy you time.” I picked up a rusty iron bar from the tracks. “I built an empire, Elena.
It’s time I protected it.”
“No,” she grabbed my arm. She pulled a small, battered USB drive from her pocket. “This is the proof.
Julian’s ledger. If you stay, he wins. If we get this to the surface, he rots.”
She was right.
Revenge was useless if we were dead. We emerged from a manhole cover in Covent Garden. The snow was falling harder now, a whiteout blizzard.
The Royal Opera House was just ahead. My company was a major sponsor. Tonight, the Prime Minister was attending a gala there.
“Arthur!” A voice boomed through the snow. Julian. He stepped out of a black SUV that had screeched to a halt on the cobblestones.
Four armed men flanked him. Tourists screamed and scattered. “Give me the drive, Arthur,” Julian shouted over the wind.
“And I’ll make it quick. You can die with your family. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
I looked at Elena.
I looked at Harry and Mia. I looked at the USB drive in my hand. Then, I looked at the massive digital billboard on the side of the Opera House.
It was broadcasting the live feed of the gala inside. “Mia,” I whispered. “You’re small.
Can you run fast?”
“Faster than a rat,” she grinned, showing a missing tooth. “Take this to the control booth,” I handed her the drive. “Tell them it’s the ‘Overture’.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going to negotiate.”
I stepped forward, hands raised.
“Let them go, Julian. It’s me you want.”
Julian laughed. “I want it all, Arthur.” He raised his gun.
I didn’t flinch. I just stared at the billboard. Suddenly, the image of the ballet dancers on the giant screen flickered.
Static. Then, a spreadsheet appeared. Followed by emails.
Photos of illegal arms deals. Julian’s signature. The music in the square stopped.
The crowd gasped. Julian turned around, his face draining of color. The massive screen was broadcasting his death warrant to all of London.
“You’re right, Julian,” I said, my voice cold as the winter wind. “I was blind. But now I see everything.”
Sirens wailed in the distance.
Real police. Julian looked at me, then at the gun. He knew it was over.
He dropped the weapon and fell to his knees in the snow, defeated not by a bullet, but by the truth. The cottage in the Swiss Alps was small. No servants.
No security team. Just the sound of wind in the pines and the crackle of a fireplace. I sat on the rug, struggling to assemble a Lego castle.
“No, Dad, that piece goes there!” Harry laughed, guiding my hand. Elena walked in, carrying a tray of hot chocolate. She looked healthy again.
The shadows were gone from her eyes. Mia—whom we had legally adopted—was curled up on the sofa, reading a book. I looked at my phone on the table.
It buzzed with missed calls from lawyers, board members, and investors. I had lost half my fortune unraveling Julian’s mess. I wasn’t The King of Concrete anymore.
I turned the phone off. I took a sip of the hot chocolate. It was cheap powder mixed with milk, not the artisanal blend I used to drink in London.
It was the best thing I had ever tasted. “Everything okay?” Elena asked, touching my cheek. I looked at my messy, loud, imperfect family.
“Yes,” I smiled. “I finally have everything I need.”
