The Argent estate had not looked like this in years. By eight in the morning, the circular drive was already choked with cars — sleek black town cars, a scattering of imported sports models polished to a mirror shine, and one absurd, gunmetal-grey Rolls-Royce that had to idle for a full ten minutes before valet staff could clear space for it. Security in dark suits stood at intervals along the hedges, earpieces glinting, scanning every arrival against a list clipped to black tablets. Waitstaff moved briskly across the marble entryway carrying trays of champagne no one had touched yet, the glasses catching the morning light like rows of tiny, trembling stars. Inside, the grand hall had been transformed. Rows of gilded chairs faced a raised dais draped in deep burgundy, the Argent crest — a rearing stag flanked by twin blades — stitched in gold thread across the backdrop. On a normal occasion, the media would have been swooning in and out of the estate, but Reginald had spe

For a few seconds, no one moved. Then the questions began — tentative at first, a single hand rising near the front, then two, then a dozen, until the hall was a thicket of raised arms and half-formed words, the polite hush shattering into an eager, disbelieving murmur. Darius lifted a hand, and the room quieted again, faster than he expected. He nodded toward a silver-haired woman near the front rose halfway from her seat, one hand still braced on the table. "Mr. Kristian—" the woman started, then caught herself, testing the name. "Young master. Forgive me. If you truly are Late, young master Lucian's son, why did it take twenty years for you to come forward? Where were you?" "I didn't know," Darius said simply. "Not until recently. I grew up believing I'm an orphan, that I was nobody's son but my own. I worked my way through medical school on scholarships and double shifts." His eyes moved briefly to Reginald, something unreadable passing between them

Rhea's phone buzzed at 6:47 in the morning, and she almost let it ring out. She'd been up until nearly two the night before, buried in a stack of post-cath lab reports, prepping for her board recertification exams, and the last thing her body wanted was to surface. But something about the rhythm of it — three texts in under a minute, then a call — dragged her out of sleep with a lurch of pure animal instinct that something was wrong. The name on the screen read Priya. She almost swiped it away, still half asleep, but the preview text stopped her cold before she could. Priya: Rhea are you seeing this Priya: please tell me this is fake Priya: [link] — "ARGENT CONSORTIUM PHYSICIAN/PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENTIST ARRESTED IN POISONING SCHEME" For a moment the words didn't organize themselves into anything that made sense. She sat up, thumb already opening the link before her mind had caught up to what it was about to show her, and then her fa

The courtroom was smaller than Darius had expected — not the marble cathedral of a federal building he'd pictured, but a narrow, wood-paneled room with too few windows and entrances. Six weeks had passed since Malcolm Kane's arrest at the Legacy Summit — six weeks in federal custody, most of which had been consumed by the trial itself, the verdict finally rendered eleven days ago. What remained now was sentencing: the formal argument over what those guilty counts would actually cost him. And he was ready for it. The gallery had been cleared of press entirely; by order of the court, and at the quiet insistence of Argent Consortium counsel, proceedings involving Kristian Argent's testimony had been sealed from media access, his identity still too newly public, too dangerous a target, to be paraded through headlines a second time in one season. Even though the face isn't in public yet, the name had been circulating all over the city. Only a handful of co