dropped purse turned away. A baker who had greeted him every morning spat into the mud and called him a thief. Children repeated the word without understanding its weight.
Bruno heard every insult.
None hurt as much as silence.
He looked upward through the rain and searched the sky for some sign that truth still mattered. But the clouds hung low and gray, and the world seemed to continue calmly while an innocent man was carried toward death.
At the mansion, Gastón watched from the upper balcony.
He did not cheer. He did not need to. His smile was small, private, and satisfied. In his mind, the problem had been solved. Bruno would die. The governor would feel avenged. The stolen accounts would remain hidden.
No one would ever know.
The prison swallowed Bruno before nightfall.
The Tower of Forgetfulness was not truly a tower. It was a buried section of the old city prison, a place where the walls sweated, the air tasted of rust, and torchlight reached only in weak orange pieces. Prisoners sent there were not expected to return to the surface. Some died of sickness. Some died of hunger. Some died because the world simply forgot to ask whether they were still alive.
Bruno’s cell was a cube of stone with iron bars and no window. The floor was layered with rotten straw. Water dripped somewhere in the darkness with maddening patience. The smell of mold and old suffering clung to everything.
A guard shoved him inside and laughed.
Then the gate closed.
The lock turned.
Bruno was alone.
At first, rage kept him warm. He paced as far as his chains allowed, whispering the truth again and again, as if repetition could make the stone walls testify. He had not stolen the ring. He had not touched it. Gastón had lied. Gastón had planted it. Gastón was the thief.
But the walls did not care.
By the second night, rage had drained into fear.
His body began to weaken. The food was almost nothing: a cup of water and a crust of bread slid under the bars by a guard who seemed disappointed every time Bruno was still breathing. The darkness made time uncertain. Hours stretched. Sleep came in broken pieces filled with dreams of the rope.
He prayed.
At first, he prayed like a child, asking to be saved. Then he prayed like a desperate man, asking only that someone learn the truth after he was gone. Finally, he prayed like a soul crushed beneath injustice.
Lord, if You are there, do not let me be alone.
No angel appeared.
No door opened.
Only the water kept dripping.
On the last night, the guard came later than usual. He carried bread in one hand and a lantern in the other. His face shone with the ugly pleasure of a man who enjoys being near another man’s helplessness.
He told Bruno the execution would be at dawn.
The words did not surprise Bruno. Somehow, he had already felt them waiting in the air.
When the guard left, Bruno sat on the straw and held the bread in both hands. It was hard, dry, and gray at the edges. His stomach clenched painfully, but grief had taken much of his appetite. He wondered whether a man
