House of Cards

This story was actually written for a college application in the US. They gave me the title and I had to do the rest.
I usually don't ask people to do this, but this time, please tell me what you visualize in the last scene! There was something intended there and I want to know if I expressed it right.
Apoorva =)

House of Cards

Caleb crouched at the base of a ceiling to floor portrait of King Henry VIII, polishing the frame. As caretaker for the Museum of English History, entitled House of Cards, Caleb took his duties very seriously, particularly since he knew himself to be a descendant of the British monarchy. He lived in the museum - the remains of a medeival castle - and acted as its security, tour guide, secretary and manager. As he straightened up, he thought he felt rather than heard movement somewhere above him...

* * * * * *

  Joshua crept stealthily through the museum, hand on his belt. It took all his willpower as a trained killer to keep his emotions under control. This was not like other missions. He had a personal link to this victim, one which could be traced back hundreds of years...

* * * * * *

  Caleb swallowed hard. He sensed danger with animal instincts the way a killer can sense weaknesses in its prey. He eyed the wall to wall, ceiling to floor portraits warily. Caleb was passionately proud of his ancestry and had always sought protection in these pictures of his lineage. But today these courageous and powerful kings and queens seemed to him not only flimsy cover in the face of danger but also cruel somehow, unable to prevent the tremor he felt in his blood and bones - a feeling he recognized as sensing the presence of the one thing he knew his family could not protect him from. 

The truth...

* * * * * *

Joshua felt Caleb's presence too. He knew as well as Caleb did that the shadows in their souls were reaching out to each other in the lonely poisoned darkness from the museum, searching for salvation from haunted memories and truth that was five centuries yet twenty feet away. His bitterness was almost overpowering enough to engulf his awareness of Caleb at the foot of the stairs...

* * * * * *

Caleb turned a corner to find himself face to face with the barrel of a gun. He swallowed hard. "Joshua," he whispered, without quite knowing how he knew the name of the man standing before him. He'd never seen this man before but he knew exactly who he was and what he'd come for.

Joshua smiled. He had the most charming smile in the world, the only thing left of him since he had lost faith in everything. "Caleb."

"What do you want?" Caleb asked, feeling like part of some sick drama.

"What do I want?" Joshua laughed, and Caleb winced. "When this museum crumbles, when the truth is revealed, when the guilt in your soul kills you...then you will know what I want."

Caleb tried to recapture some courage and dignity. "The guilt is not all mine to bear. It was centuries of treason that made your family fall."

The gun pushed harder against his forehead. "And yet you have made the House of Cards flourish. You have fed the world lies - which you knew were lies. You disgraced your ancestors' names by hiding the truth." Caleb winced. "Only you knew of Mary Tudor's first half sister, Anne Boleyn's first child, whom everyone claimed to be a stillborn because they feared Henry's fury. You knew that once Mary died, Elizabeth should not have taken the throne, that she had a sister who had grown up in silence, just as illegitimate as Mary and Elizabeth. None of them knew this."

Caleb fell to his knees, shaking. "No. No." Joshua's revolver followed him.

Joshua laughed. "The secret has resurfaced only now, Caleb. I know of your sources. You have known for a long time, haven't you? And yet you knew the shame would kill you and your pride in the end. I am here to help make that happen." Joshua glanced at the portrait of Henry VIII behind Caleb and sneered. "How ironic - the start of all the misery. Just imagine...had she not been raised in secrecy and been given her rightful place at Mary's death, I would be where you are now, caring for the House of Cards, and no one would have a gun pointed at their head..." He shook his head, clearing away the daggers in his heart. "We're all liars, traitors, criminals, Caleb. We're all cursed, right down from him. We've come full circle. And it's going to end here."

Caleb took a deep breath. "You'll never bring down our ancestry," he managed fiercely. "The House of Cards will live longer after we have passed on."

Joshua smiled a haunted, broken smile. "It was never meant to be me," he said. "No, Caleb, it is you who have brought shame on the name of the House of Cards. Your conscience will tear it to the ground. I'm only here to help." He pulled the trigger twice.

  The last thing Caleb saw as his knees buckled and his body went numb was the lowering of the last card onto the roof of the castle: the hideous, ghostly face of a jack - his own face. Caleb saw his portrait take his place as he died, doing the last thing required to destroy the home in which he had lived a lie. The jack of spades, the largest portrait yet, leaned into the walls and added the last drop of poison that the soul of this family could take. It toppled sideways, and, finally, the House of Cards came tumbling down...