Page 31 of Freedom’s Inferno

My exhale was louder than I would have liked. “We didn’t start out that way. Everything was supposed to be clean. Just investments, portfolio management, all above board.” I rubbed my jaw. “Dickie pitched Costa as an investor. It sounded sketchy as hell, but he had a way of making me feel like I was the one being small-minded.”

“He did that with everyone,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said, stealing a glance at her.

Her expression had shuttered, like she’d closed a door I hadn’t known was open. Her focus returned to the task at hand, fingers already moving again.

My lip twitched, observing the way her tongue poked out between her lips when she was concentrating.

“Honestly, the percentage we were making was astronomical.” My cheeks burned with shame, hypocrisy snaking its way through my belly.

It was ridiculous, admitting I had taken a shit all over my own morals because my best buddy told me to. Saying it all out loud felt obscene.

“One time, I told him I wanted out. He showed up at my apartment with a bottle of whiskey and this speech about loyalty. How we were brothers, how he’d never let me drown. I believed him. God help me, I actually believed him.”

“Wait. I’ve got something here,” Lana said, voice tight with surprise.

She pulled her hand free from a filing cabinet, tugging out a plain white envelope, the kind one might mistake for junk mail.

My stomach knotted.

She slid a nail under the flap and tore it open. Inside was a small brass key attached to a faded tag. Dime Bank — Box 394. Beneath it, a folded slip of paper with an address for a branch downtown.

“Son of a bitch,” I murmured.

Lana looked up at me, wide-eyed. “A safety deposit box. That has to be where he kept the real records.”

I took the key from her, turning it in my fingers. The metal was cold, heavy. It looked ordinary, like every other key in the world, but my gut said this was it. This was the thing we’d been tearing our lives apart trying to find.

The room shrank, the air thickening around us. The soft hum of the lights grew louder in my ears. I caught my reflection in the dark window glass. Tired eyes, a smear of dust on my jaw, the faint outline of Lana behind me, watching.

“He really thought of everything,” I said. “No digital trail. He kept it all in a box nobody else could open.”

Her lips parted, a breath catching somewhere between relief and disbelief. “So we go there next.”

I nodded, the weight of the key biting into my palm. “Yeah. First thing in the morning.”

She smiled. Small, weary, but real. For a heartbeat, the tension cracked, something like hope bleeding through the exhaustion.

Then, I smelled it.

Smoke.

The stench crept in, subtle at first, barely noticeable under the scent of paper and printer ink. Then came the sound: a low, popping hiss, followed by a soft, distant groan like the building itself exhaled.

Lana’s smile vanished. “Charlie…”

I turned toward the door. The corridor beyond the glass was hazy now, the emergency lights painting everything in dull amber. The air shimmered with heat, and my brain refused to believe it. Then, the alarm began to shriek, sharp and unrelenting.

“Move!” I grabbed Lana’s hand, the key still clutched in my other fist.

As we bolted for the stairwell, the thought slammed through my head like a bullet: This wasn’t an accident.

Chapter 14

Chuck

Smoke doesn’t look the way you expect it to. It doesn’t billow like it does in the movies. No, it creeps in, silent and curling. By the time you notice it, you’ve already been breathing it in. I realized that too late.