Novels by u15002308

Every camera in the auditorium swung toward Darius, and the room filled with shouted questions. Is it true? Does the Larkin Tally exist? How much money? Which families?He stood on the stage with the microphone in his hand and understood exactly how easy it would be to make this go away. The Tally had no public records. Its loans had never touched a bank, and its debtors would never admit a thing. One calm sentence would do it. A desperate man caught stealing pension money will say anything, he could tell them, and half the room would believe him by the end of the day.But Grace Nwosu was standing in the fifth row with her hand pressed to her mouth, and two hundred pensioners were watching his face. He had promised them the truth, and he couldn't stand here and lie to them less than an hour after proving that everyone else had.Beside the stage, Freya took a step toward him. "Darius," she said under her breath. "Don't."He raised the microphone anyway."Yes," he said. "The Larkin Tall

On the ninth day after his grandfather's death, Darius walked into Ellingham Tower for the first time since his arrest.The auditorium on the fourth floor was packed. Two hundred pensioners filled the rows of red seats, many of them holding the same cardboard signs they had carried on Gilder's Row. Along the back wall stood a solid line of cameras from every network in Ostley, Ashworth Media in the center with three crews of its own. The Fairfaxes sat in the front row, Cordelia in navy and pearls and Reginald gray and silent beside her. On the stage, behind a long table draped in Ellingham blue, Jasper sat with the pension board on one side and Sienna on the other, her hands folded neatly in her lap.High above the seats, behind a wall of tinted glass, was the private gallery reserved for the Ellingham family. Severin stood there alone with his hands clasped behind his back, looking down at the room like a man watching a play he had already read.Freya walked in beside Darius. They ha

Darius called Freya from the taxi, and she was waiting in the vault when he got back, sleeves rolled up and two cups of black coffee already poured. She didn't ask how he had gotten the records. He didn't tell her, and he didn't mention the handwritten line on the back of the invitation either. It sat in his pocket all night, and he felt it there every time she leaned over his shoulder.They spread Isabella's pages across the long table and began to trace.The first part was easy. Jasper had moved the stolen pension money into the casino in small deposits, a few hundred thousand dollars at a time, then cashed it out as gambling winnings so it looked clean. Darius had expected the trail to jump straight to the Cayman account from there. It didn't. The winnings went to a numbered account first, and from there into a company Darius had never heard of."Orrery Holdings," he read aloud. "Do you know it?"Freya was already typing at the server terminal. She stopped, and for a long moment sh

The Moreau Grand rose above the harbor like a tower of gold glass, and at eleven o'clock at night every window was blazing. Darius came alone, as the invitation asked, in the same black suit he had worn to bury his grandfather. He had told Basil where he was going. He hadn't told Freya.He got as far as the VIP entrance on the top floor.The host at the door was a slim man in a velvet jacket, and he recognized Darius before he reached the rope. His polite smile vanished. "I'm afraid not, sir," he said, stepping squarely into his path. "We don't admit guests who are under criminal investigation. I'm sure you understand."Darius reached into his jacket for the invitation, but a burst of laughter from inside cut him off.Behind the velvet rope, at the best table in the room, Jasper Ellingham was celebrating. Sienna sat beside him in silver sequins, and a half-dozen of Jasper's friends lounged around them with stacks of chips and bottles of champagne on ice. One of them spotted Darius and

The Hatton Street garage was eleven minutes from Gilder's Row. Darius made it in seven, running the last two blocks through the rain with the emergency operator still talking in his ear.He found Benji on the third level beside his old blue hatchback. He was curled on the concrete with one arm over his head, his glasses snapped in half beside him. His laptop lay a few feet away, its screen shattered and its casing pried open like a shell. The slot where the hard drive should have been was empty. There was no sign of a grey sedan anywhere."Benji." Darius dropped to his knees beside him. "Benji, can you hear me?"One swollen eye opened. "Took you long enough," Benji croaked.The paramedics arrived four minutes later and loaded him onto a stretcher, and Darius climbed into the back of the ambulance without asking permission. Under the harsh white lights, the damage looked worse. Benji's lips were split, his face was purple along one side, and he winced every time he breathed. Still, as

Darius woke the morning after the funeral to a phone that wouldn't stop vibrating.Four hundred notifications had arrived overnight, most of them from strangers. He opened the first link and saw his own face. It was the footage from his engagement party, shot by a guest on a phone. There he was on his knees in a torn tuxedo with his hands cuffed behind him, while Jasper stood above him holding the folder of forged records. Ashworth Media, the biggest network in Ostley, had cut it together with photographs of elderly pensioners and run it on every channel they owned under a single headline.WATCHMAKER'S GRANDSON STOLE PENSIONERS' SAVINGS.By breakfast it had been viewed two million times. By ten o'clock, the comments had found his address.By noon, they were outside. Darius watched from behind the shop counter as the crowd grew on Gilder's Row, sixty or seventy people at first, then more. Most of them were old. They were retired dockworkers, clerks and cleaners who had given Ellingham