Seventy-Four Billion Reasons

Chapter Five: Trial By Headline

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 Holdings thirty years of their lives, holding cardboard signs with his name crossed out in red paint. They chanted the word thief over and over, and he couldn't bring himself to hate them for it. If he had lost his savings, he would have stood out there too.

At twenty past twelve, a brick came through the front window.

The glass exploded inward and rained across Barnaby's workbench, across the green felt and the half-repaired wristwatch and the loupe he had worn every day for forty years. Darius stood among the shards without moving. Somewhere outside, a few people cheered.

Freya Locke arrived twenty minutes later, stepping over the glass in sharp heels as though broken windows were simply part of the job. Basil was already taping cardboard over the hole. She didn't bother with sympathy.

"Jasper's lawyers didn't give up when Penrose dropped the charges," she said, setting her tablet on the counter. "They took the case to a different prosecutor this morning. Oscar Grout, the most ambitious man in the district attorney's office, who would sell his own mother for a headline. If he refiles, you'll be charged with a crime, and you remember what that means."

"Any House can force the vote early," Darius said.

"And the Tally dies before you've even learned where the light switches are." She turned the tablet toward him and showed him a line from the ledgers. "But there's a simpler way to end this. Ashworth Media borrowed three hundred million dollars from your grandfather six years ago. It's still owed. One phone call from you, and I promise they'll retract every word of that story by sunset."

Darius looked at the number for a long moment. It would be easy. Part of him wanted it badly, wanted to watch the anchors who had called him a thief read out an apology with their teeth clenched.

"No," he said.

Freya's eyes narrowed. "Explain."

"A retraction I force with a threat doesn't make me innocent. It makes me look guilty and powerful, which is worse." He gestured toward the cardboard in the window and the chanting beyond it. "Those people would never believe me again. And the Five Houses would see exactly what they're afraid of, a new Keeper who uses the Tally like a weapon the first time someone hurts him. I'd be handing them their reason to vote me out."

"So what's your plan? Wait politely while Grout writes up the charges?"

"I found that theft by following the money," Darius said. "I'll clear my name the same way."

Freya studied him for a long moment. He couldn't tell if she thought he was principled or just naive. "Then you'd better be very good at it," she said finally, and left.

The crowd drifted away after dark. Darius was sweeping the last of the glass from the workbench when someone knocked softly on the door.

It was Sienna. She stood alone in the rain without an umbrella, her hair plastered to her cheeks and her eyes red, and before he could speak she was crying.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry about all of it, Darius. About your grandfather, about the party. Jasper made me do it. He said he would ruin my father's company if I didn't stand next to him. I was scared." She reached for his hand. "I never stopped loving you. Not for one minute. I need you to know that."

He let her take his hand, but he didn't hold hers back. He knew exactly why she had come. Her father had heard one word in that chapel yesterday, and twenty-four hours later, here she was.

"When did it start?" he asked quietly. "With Jasper."

"A few weeks ago." She wiped her eyes. "It was nothing, Darius. It was a mistake, I swear."

He looked down at her wrist. A diamond bracelet sparkled there, a thin line of white stones fastened with a small sapphire clasp. He had seen that bracelet before, though not on her. He had seen it described on an invoice buried in the pension fund transfers, one of the payments he had traced on that long night in the analytics office.

"Aldridge and Finch," he said. "Diamond bracelet, sapphire clasp. Two hundred and ten thousand dollars, paid out of the employee pension fund and delivered by hand on the ninth of March." He met her eyes. "That was eight months ago, Sienna. You're wearing it right now."

For a second she didn't move. Then the tears stopped, all at once, as if someone had turned off a tap. Her face went smooth and cold, and she pulled her hand out of his. She didn't argue, and she didn't apologize again. She simply turned and walked back into the rain without another word.

Darius locked the door behind her and sat at the workbench for a long time.

Late that night, his phone rang. The screen said Benji Ruiz, and Darius answered on the first ring. Benji was a systems engineer in Ellingham's IT department, the only person in the entire company who had texted him after the arrest.

"Dare." Benji's voice was low and fast, and Darius could hear traffic behind him. "Listen to me. They wiped the servers yesterday, every log from the pension accounts. But I made a copy before they got to it. I've got everything Jasper tried to delete."

Darius was on his feet. "Where are you?"

"Walking to my car. The Hatton Street garage." A pause. "Dare, someone's following me. Grey sedan, for the last six blocks. I think they know."

"Benji, get somewhere public. Stay on the line."

"I'm almost there, I'm..."

There was a sharp crash, metal on concrete. Then a scream, high and terrified, cut off halfway through.

Then nothing at all.

"Benji?" Darius gripped the phone. "Benji!"

Nobody answered.