Read Chapter 25: The Grand Account

The clamor of the banquet swallowed Aidan whole as he stepped through the servant’s door, Vincente at his flank, both dressed in stolen finery that smelled of lye and someone else’s sweat. Candlelight caught the gilded molding of the governor’s grand hall, and the air hung thick with roasted meats, wine, and the hollow laughter of men who believed themselves untouchable.

The governor stood at the head of the long table, a silver goblet raised, his voice rolling over the assembly of Santo Domingo’s colonial elite. Merchants, militia officers, and powdered judges leaned in like disciples.

“—and I assure you, gentlemen, the pirates who plundered our treasury will hang before the month’s end. Their kind cannot endure the light of civilization.”

Aidan’s jaw tightened. *Their kind.* He had spent months being that kind. Now he would show them what that kind could do.

He moved through the crowd with deliberate calm, Vincente splitting off toward the far wall where the governor’s private safe stood behind a tapestry. It was a gamble—the house was crawling with guards—but the governor had grown arrogant in his victory, believing every pirate dead or fleeing. He had left his own doors open.

The governor was mid-sentence when Aidan stepped into the candlelight at the table’s foot.

“You,” the governor said, the goblet freezing at his lips. Recognition soured his face. “The gunner. How did you—guards!”

“Stay your guards,” Aidan called out, his voice carrying over the sudden stir. He withdrew a leather satchel from beneath his coat and tossed it onto the table. It landed with a wet slap, spilling papers across the polished wood. “Unless you’d like these read aloud to your assembly first.”

The governor’s eyes went wide as coins in a beggar’s palm. He knew those papers. Knew the handwriting. Knew the seal.

“That is nothing but forged drivel,” he spat, but his hand trembled on the goblet.

Aidan turned to the assembled dignitaries, speaking clearly, deliberately, like a man sighting a gun at maximum range. “These are letters from your governor to his factor in Seville. They detail the removal of the colony’s treasury in stages over the past six months. They also outline a plan to blame the theft on pirates—pirates like me—to cover the trail of his own embezzlement.”

Murmurs rippled through the hall. A merchant dropped his fork. A judge set down his wine with a definitive clack.

“Lies!” The governor slammed his goblet down, sloshing red across the white linen. “This man is a pirate and a deserter. His word is worth nothing. I demand he be taken!”

“His word may be worth little,” Vincente said, emerging from behind the tapestry with a heavy iron strongbox clutched to his chest. He dropped it before the governor with a crash that silenced every voice. “But his key opens locks. And your son was most forthcoming about where you hide your ledgers.”

The governor’s face drained to the color of old bone.

Vincente flipped the strongbox’s lid open. Inside lay a second set of documents, bound in red ribbon, stamped with the governor’s personal seal. Even without reading them, the assembly understood. Whispers turned to accusations. The militia captain at the governor’s right hand slowly drew his sidearm—not toward Aidan, but toward the governor.

The governor looked around the room and found no allies left. His shoulders sagged. His hand fell to his side.

“Take him,” the militia captain ordered, and two guards seized the governor’s arms.

The governor said nothing as they dragged him past Aidan. But at the door, he twisted his head, eyes burning with final hatred.

“You seek justice for your father’s name, boy?” The governor’s lips peeled into a grin like a knife wound. “You think yourself the son of a wronged hero?”

Aidan stilled. His heart dropped to the pit of his stomach.

The governor laughed, a sharp, bitter sound. “Your father deserted the Royal Navy. He was a traitor to England, a coward who ran from his post and died in the hold of a slaver’s ship, choking on his own vomit. I oversaw his court-martial myself, boy. You are nothing. You were never anything.”

The guards yanked him through the door. The assembly erupted into chaos—voices raised, orders shouted, the machinery of colonial law grinding into motion.

But Aidan did not hear any of it.

The words had hit him like a broadside at close range—a hole blown through his hull below the waterline. Everything he had carried for years—the weight of his father’s shame, the reason he had been stripped of his naval commission, the ghost he had been chasing across every horizon—shattered on the floor of a governor’s banquet hall.

Vincente reached him, gripping his shoulder. “Aidan. We need to move before they change their minds.”

Aidan made no sound. His eyes stayed fixed on the empty doorway where the governor had vanished.

“He’s lying. He has to be lying.”

Vincente hesitated. Then, quietly, he said, “The governor said his father was a traitor. He’ll say anything to wound you. You know that.”

But there was something in Vincente’s voice. A hesitance. A careful step around a truth he did not want to speak.

Aidan turned to him sharply. “What do you know?”

Vincente looked away, jaw tight. “Later. We need to leave now.”

Then, from the hallway beyond, a young officer pushed through the crowd, breathless. “Lieutenant! The governor’s personal correspondence—we found sealed letters in his chambers. One carries the seal of the Admiralty, addressed to a Captain O’Malley.”

Aidan’s throat closed. He took the letter from the officer’s trembling hand. The wax was cracked. Years old. He knew the seal—the same device on the brass key in his pocket.

He broke it open and read in the flickering candlelight, the words blurring before his eyes.

*…Your son has been informed, per standing orders, that you were dishonorably discharged. This deception was necessary to protect him from the Crown’s enemies who would use him against you. You are hereby posthumously restored to full rank and honors. Your actions at the slave barque Delphine—engaging a pirate vessel at close quarters to free the captives aboard, at the cost of your own life—are recorded as an act of extraordinary valor.*

Aidan’s hand trembled. The paper shook like a ship’s sail in a rising storm.

His father had not run. His father had died saving slaves from pirates.

And the governor had spent twenty years burying that truth to control and humiliate him.

Vincente was watching him, eyes soft. “We need to move, Aidan. The pardon is being drawn up, but it’s not ink yet.”

Aidan folded the letter carefully, pressed it to his chest, and nodded.

The sea outside the window was dark, heaving under a thickening sky.

His father’s name was clean.

And now, so was his.