Rhea had seen pictures of wealth before. She herself had lived and dine in wealth. She had walked past glass towers downtown, had once attended a gala at a hotel so polished it had made her feel underdressed in her best dress. However, none of it had prepared her for the quiet, absolute certainty of old money — hedges trimmed with surgical precision, a fountain that ran even though no one was there to admire it, security cameras so discreetly placed she only noticed them because she was looking. Dennis drove them the last stretch of road himself, his knuckles pale on the wheel, glancing at her every so often with the particular worry of a man who suspected he had made a mistake by agreeing to this. "Listen to me," he said, eyes on the road. "When we get inside — if we get inside — you let me do the talking first. You don't approach anyone. You don't raise your voice. You don't mention the case, not directly, not until you're standing in front of the pe

Rhea was led up a wide, curving staircase by a member of staff who said almost nothing to her the entire walk, only offering a polite gesture whenever they reached a turn. The North Wing, when she finally stepped into it, was quieter than the rest of the house, the kind of silence that felt deliberate, as though the walls themselves had been built to keep secrets. She was shown into a spacious sitting room with high windows and left alone with only a soft "Someone will be with you shortly, Miss," before the door clicked shut behind her. For a moment, Rhea simply stood there, arms folded, staring at the elegant furniture, the gold-trimmed curtains, the paintings that probably cost more than her entire life income. Then the nerves crept in, and she began to pace. Back and forth, back and forth, her heels clicking softly against the polished floor, her mind spinning through every possible outcome of the conversation she was about to have. She reh

Darius tilted his head back, confusion still etched deep into his features. "Your father," he repeated slowly. "Who is your father, Rhea?" Rhea crossed her arms tightly over her chest, her chin lifting in defiance even as something fragile trembled beneath her composure. "Malcolm Kane," she said. "The man who was sentenced to life imprisonment. Because of you. I mean, how could you be so heartless?" For a moment, Darius simply stared at her, certain he had misheard. Then a short, disbelieving chuckle escaped him. "Is this some kind of joke? How is Malcolm Kane your father?" "Does it look like I'm joking?" Rhea's voice cracked sharply through the room. "My father is rotting in a cell right now, and you're standing there laughing at me." "Rhea— How is Malcome your father? We ran background check on him, he has no family." "And you didn't think to ask me anything?" Rhea scoffed. "I have no—" "If you don't get him released," she cut

By the time Darius reached the campus gates, he had called Rhea eleven times. Eleven unanswered calls, each one ringing out into the same hollow silence, followed by the same automated voicemail greeting he had already memorized word for word. He stared at his phone screen for a while, shaking his head and exhaling slowly. By the fourteenth call, he'd told himself she was probably busy with a critical surgery and by the seventeenth, he'd stopped lying to himself. She was avoiding him. After what happened like night, he couldn't exactly blame her. But knowing that didn't make the silence any easier to sit with, and it certainly hadn't made it easier to focus on the one thing he'd spent the last three months preparing for. His NBME shelf exam. He shoved the phone into his back pocket, exhaled once and forced his mind into the narrow, disciplined space it needed to occupy for the next several hours. Rhea would still be angry in the evenin

Darius's eyes swept the room frantically, there was obviously no way out of this, and the thought of bringing out his phone and text either Natasha or Chalrie died before it could reach a conclusion. That would only worsen his situation. He forced his breathing to slow, forced the question that clawed at the back of his throat — 'how they got into his secured apartment' — into silence, because it didn't matter now. What mattered was what came next. Why were they here? He walked into the room without after regaining his composure, leveling his chin and squaring his shoulders, refusing to let his frantic pulse show on his face. "How the hell did you get in here?" he said. Not a question so much as a demand. The oldest of them, silver threading through dark hair, gestured toward the empty armchair. "How about you have a seat, Mr. Cross?" "I'm not sitting until you tell me exactly what's going—." He didn't get to finish