Chapter 14 - The Edge of the Abyss
We fell together into the dark cavity, but instinct took over. My hands flailed desperately in the smoke and dust until my fingers locked around a thick, steel support beam running horizontally across the upper framing of the sub-level.
I caught myself with a bone-jarring jolt that threatened to tear my shoulder sockets apart.
And in my left hand, my fingers were locked firmly around the collar of Vanessa’s blouse.
She dangled suspended in the air over the twenty-foot drop into the burning rubble below, her face pale, her eyes wide with sudden, primal terror. The sophisticated, cold architect was gone, replaced by a terrified woman staring straight down into the grave she had dug for everyone else.
"Mark..." Vanessa choked out, her fingers clawing frantically at my wrist. "Mark, pull me up! Please! We can fix this! We can run away—start over somewhere else!"
I looked down at her. The smoke billowed up around us, stinging my eyes, but my mind was crystal clear. I thought of Sophie, cowering in the grass outside, reliving the terror of a mother who was never her real mother. I thought of the real Vanessa, rotting in a dark box beneath our feet because of this monster’s unbridled greed.
"You built a wonderful house, Vanessa," I said quietly, my voice steady against the roar of the fire below. "But you forgot one thing."
"What?" she sobbed, her grip slipping on my sweaty forearm. "What did I forget?"
"Foundations have to carry weight," I answered. "And yours was built entirely on sand."
With a final, agonizing groan of twisted metal and splitting timber, the support beam shifted. Vanessa’s fingers slipped from my wrist with a soft gasp.
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"Mark—!"
She plummeted into the dark, smoke-filled abyss below, disappearing into the raging fire as the sub-level flooring collapsed completely inward in a thunderous roar of dust and flame.
