Simon stopped at the battered door marked Storage Room 23, his breath shallow, pulse loud in his ears. The corridor lay hushed, shadows clinging to the walls. Behind him, the janitor waited — still, unreadable.
Simon pushed the door open.
Dim light revealed the debris of abandonment: broken chairs, collapsed cartons, years of neglect. On the concrete floor, something gleamed. A yearbook, its spine cracked, a page marked with a blood‑red ribbon.
He knelt, brushed away dust, and opened it.
In a grainy class photograph, his face had been circled in heavy red ink. Beneath it, one word was scrawled.
THIEF.
The accusation struck cold and absurd. Simon had never stolen anything in his life. He shut the book, steadying himself — then noticed a battered tin box perched atop the radiator.
It wouldn't open.
The janitor stepped forward without a word, producing a heavy ring of keys. One turned. The latch clicked.
Inside lay fragments of a life: a yellowed newspaper clipping, an old Ugandan passport belonging to a woman Simon had never met, and a train ticket from Dublin to London.
Simon froze at the photograph in the clipping.
A seven‑year‑old boy stood at a bus stop, clutching a police officer's hand. It was him.
Memory surged. His first foster mother — her quiet determination, her belief that answers could still be found. The desperate hope that someone might recognise his face, that a parent would come forward.
No one ever had.
Folded beneath the clipping was a note.
Tom Harrington's handwriting. Hurried. Uneven.
It was a confession — brief, urgent — asking Simon to meet him that evening. The words felt wrong somehow, discordant with the Tom Simon knew: loyal, careful, incapable of betrayal or guilt.
Simon checked his watch. The interviews would have to wait.
Some things were older than schedules. Tom's family had stood beside him when no one else would — since the day Tom had opened the closet door and let him breathe again.
Simon left the storage room quickly, unease tightening with every step.
Halfway down the corridor, it struck him.
The room at his old school — the one where he'd been locked, blindfolded and alone — had also been Room 23.
By the time the janitor slipped quietly away, Simon was already moving, past and present collapsing into one another.
The elevator hummed as Simon descended, memories rising instead.
Tom Harrington — golden, untouchable to the world, but never truly seen. A son raised to perform: piano by six, fencing by ten, medals by sixteen. Affection measured in achievement.
"Harringtons don't make a scene," his father used to say. "We make history."
What Tom wanted most had never been offered freely.
When he met Simon — bruised, watchful, alone — something shifted. The bullying was no secret. Tom noticed the flinches, the trembling hands. At first he intervened quietly. Then the cruelty sharpened.
When the online forum surfaced, Tom hacked it himself, tracing logins, copying threats. When warnings arrived — Sarah's sneering messages, Edwin Harrington's cold disapproval — Tom escalated.
He forced his father's hand with a threat of his own: expose a buried deal, one that hovered dangerously close to illegality. Edwin relented. Protection followed. Simon was moved. The ringleaders were silenced.
The cost was Tom.
Officially, it was "leadership training." In truth, it was exile — Switzerland, then Singapore. Distance as discipline.
Still, Tom watched from the margins. Funding scholarships under aliases. Making introductions. Guarding Simon's life without ever claiming a place in it.
When word finally reached him that Simon had returned to London, Tom came back too — older, marked, no longer willing to remain unseen.
The church clock chimed five as Simon reached the bus stop.
A figure leaned against the railings, coat collar turned up against the chill. Older. Broader. Unmistakable.
Tom smiled.
"You came," he said.
Simon's voice caught. "Your letter — I didn't know."
"You weren't meant to," Tom replied gently. "Not before."
The weight between them was heavy with gratitude and guilt. "You gave up everything for me."
Tom shook his head. "Not everything."
For a moment, the city receded. They were no longer survivors circling old damage, but men standing in its aftermath.
Tom's loyalty had never been a transaction. It was a choice — made again and again, without demand.
They sat in silence, the kind that doesn't ask to be filled.
Above them, lights flickered on across the city.
Simon finally exhaled. "Let's go home."
Tom smiled — real, unguarded.
"Lead the way."