The drive to Argent Memorial took less than fifteen minutes, though to Rhea, sitting rigid in the back seat with Darius's head cradled carefully in her lap, it felt like an hour stretched thin across every red light Natasha blew through without slowing. By the time they burst through the emergency entrance, a team was already waiting, alerted ahead of arrival. Darius was lifted onto a gurney and swept through a set of double doors before either woman could follow, and the doors swung shut behind him, leaving both of them standing frozen in the hallway. Reginald arrived twenty minutes later, having driven himself the moment Holt reached him with the news, and the fury radiating off him as he strode down the corridor was unlike anything either woman had seen from him before. "Natasha!" His voice cracked through the waiting area, drawing the attention of every nurse within earshot. "Explain to me right now why I am hearing about my grandson's co

Darius simply stood there, staring at the small boy who had just delivered the words so plainly, grief and disbelief warring across his face. "He killed himself?" Darius repeated quietly, looking up at the elders who stood there shifting uncomfortably. "How is that even possible. Are you certain?" The boy nodded, though one of the caretakers quickly ushered him away before he could say anything further, murmuring something about chores that needed finishing, clearly eager to close the subject before it could go any further in front of the children. Darius turned to the elder who'd spoken first, confusion tangled up with the grief now, his mind refusing to settle on any one feeling long enough to process it properly. "Is the library still open?" The woman blinked, thrown by the sudden shift in direction. "It is, but—" "I'd like to check out a few books," Darius said, already moving toward the familiar hallway before she could finish whatever

"Stop right here," Natasha parked right outside an empty park, helping Darius out of the car gently. Darius sat slumped against the base of an old oak tree, barely able to hold his own head upright. They couldn't go back to the estate. Not yet. Not with the state Darius was in, red and trembling and threaded through with veins that had crawled halfway up his throat by the time they'd found this secluded corner of the park to work in. Natasha had been running back and forth for the better part of an hour — first to a pharmacy two blocks over for a mortar and pestle when grinding the torn pages' listed ingredients by hand proved too slow. Then to a small specialty market that, by some miracle, stocked two of the rarer components the recipe called for, then back to the car for the water bottles they'd need to prepare the mixture properly. Each back and forth left Darius alone against the tree for a few unbearable minutes, and each time she

The days that followed settled into an uneasy quiet around the estate, though nothing about it felt like actual peace. Rhea had barely spoken a civil word to Natasha since the driveway, and what little she did say came dressed in a coldness that made even the staff uncomfortable to witness. She'd taken to walking a wide berth around her whenever their paths crossed in the halls, offering nothing beyond a clipped nod if acknowledgment was unavoidable at all, and on the rare occasion Natasha attempted conversation, Rhea's responses came clipped. "Could you pass the reports to Young master when he's free?" Natasha asked one afternoon, finding Rhea in the sitting room with a cup of tea balanced on her knee. Rhea didn't even look up from her phone. "Give them to Holt." "I just thought, since you were heading that way—" "I said give them to Holt." Rhea's almost yelled out the response, finally lifting her eyes to fix Natasha with a look that l

After checking in at the prison's reception, Rhea followed the officer through the security checkpoint, with her brother, William, walking beside her. He kept his hands shoved into his jacket pockets, his expression unusually tense as they were escorted toward the visitation area. Neither of them said much. The closer they got, the heavier the silence between them seemed to become. They found Malcolm seated beneath the small wooden shed near the edge of the lawn, shielded from the afternoon sun, a paper plate balanced on his knee piled with barbecue ribs, sauce still glistening on his fingers as he tore into one with an ease that looked almost obscene for a man serving a life sentence. He caught sight of them before they'd even fully crossed the lawn, and the plate was set aside almost instantly. "Oh my little boy." Malcolm rose immediately, arms already open, pulling his son into a tight embrace the second he was close enough. "Look at you. I tho