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CHAPTER 79
When Darius returned to his seat, Reginald reached for his hand and held it, and neither of them said anything, because there was nothing left to say that the trial hadn't already said for them. Judge Titus turned her attention to the defense table. "Dr. Kane, you have the right to address the court before sentencing. Do you wish to do so?" For a long moment, Kane didn't move, his gaze fixed on the floor of the courtroom. Then, slowly, he rose, his cuffed hands trembling against the edge of the table. "Your Honor," he began, and his voice cracked almost immediately. "I— I want the court to understand that I never intended for Reginald to die. I loved that man and I believe I was only doing things for the better great. Ten years, I was at his side more than his own family—" "Objection to characterization," Bell said quietly, not even bothering to stand. "I'll allow him to finish," Titus said. Kane swallowed. "The debts came first
CHAPTER 78
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
CHAPTER 77
The thought sat in her chest like a stone for two full days. She almost called him a dozen times. Her thumb hovered over his name in her contacts more often than she could count, the message half-composed and deleted, half-composed and deleted again — /Darius, I need to ask you something. Darius, can we talk. Darius, my father—/ But every time, she stopped. She knew what he was buried under right now. The last time they talked, Darius had informed her that he'd be writing his final exams soon and he had been seriously preparing for it. He’d told her once, trying to make light of it, that failing those exams would feel like failing the only part of his life nobody had handed to him. "He doesn't need this right now," she told herself, turning her phone face-down on the nightstand. "He doesn't need to be pulled into cleaning up after my father on top of everything else he's carrying." And beneath all of that was a quieter fear she didn't quite k
CHAPTER 76
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
CHAPTER 75
At last, the questions began to slow — a few stragglers, a final clarification about a supply contract — and then, gradually, silence settled back over the hall and one could tell that the audience were satisfied and proud of the man standing right in front of them. Darius let it sit there a moment, unbroken, before he spoke again. "There's one more thing," he said. Something in his tone had changed — quieter now, and colder, the warmth he'd used to win the room over draining out of it entirely. The hall stilled at the shift. Kane's head came up, knowing this was it. "Before I answer any more questions about the future of this company," Darius continued, "I think it's only fair that everyone in this room understands exactly what almost happened to it." He nodded once toward the side of the stage. A technician near the audio panel pressed something, and a low hum crackled through the hall's speaker system — the particular, hollow static of
CHAPTER 74
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
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