Seventy-Four Billion Reasons

Chapter Nine: Five Minutes

On the ninth day after his grandfather's death, Darius walked into Ellingham Tower for the first time since his arrest.

The auditorium on the fourth floor was packed. Two hundred pensioners filled the rows of red seats, many of them holding the same cardboard signs they had carried on Gilder's Row. Along the back wall stood a solid line of cameras from every network in Ostley, Ashworth Media in the center with three crews of its own. The Fairfaxes sat in the front row, Cordelia in navy and pearls and Reginald gray and silent beside her. On the stage, behind a long table draped in Ellingham blue, Jasper sat with the pension board on one side and Sienna on the other, her hands folded neatly in her lap.

High above the seats, behind a wall of tinted glass, was the private gallery reserved for the Ellingham family. Severin stood there alone with his hands clasped behind his back, looking down at the room like a man watching a play he had already read.

Freya walked in beside Darius. They had barely spoken in two days. He still didn't know whether he could trust her, and he wasn't sure she knew either. But every camera in the room turned when they came through the door, and he refused to give his enemies the satisfaction of seeing a single crack. He kept his face calm and his shoulders straight, and he sat down in the third row as if he belonged there.

Jasper rose at exactly ten o'clock, and he was brilliant.

He spoke without notes in a warm, sorrowful voice, like a man personally wounded by what had been done to these people. He walked them through the theft on a giant screen, slide by slide, the forged transfers with Darius's name and passport number, the offshore account in the Caymans. He paused often to look out at the pensioners with what appeared to be real grief. Some of them were nodding.

Then he played his masterstroke.

"We wanted to be certain," Jasper said, "so we followed the money further. And we discovered that before it went offshore, every dollar passed through a company called Orrery Holdings." He clicked, and a registration document filled the screen. "Orrery is owned and controlled by the Larkin family. Darius didn't act alone, ladies and gentlemen. This was a family business."

The room erupted. People were on their feet, shouting, and the cameras swung toward the third row. In the middle of the crowd, Grace Nwosu stood up slowly in her green coat. She looked straight at Darius, and her voice cut through the noise.

"You promised me," she said. "You stood on your step and promised me. You're a liar."

In the front row, Cordelia Fairfax had turned to the nearest reporter. "I always knew he was trash," she said, loud enough for the microphones. "I told my daughter from the very first day."

Darius stood up. He waited until the shouting faded enough for him to be heard.

"I'd like five minutes," he said to the board chairman.

The chairman glanced at Jasper, who spread his hands generously, smiling. "Let him speak," Jasper said. "Let everyone hear what he has to say."

Darius walked up the steps to the stage, plugged a small drive into the laptop and turned to face two hundred angry people.

"I'm not going to use any jargon," he said. "If something I say doesn't make sense, stop me." He pulled up the first transfer record, the one with his name on it, and enlarged the time stamp until it filled the screen. "Eleven months ago, the bank changed the way it writes the time on every transfer. These records use the old way. That means every one of them was typed up by hand, from an old template. They're fake."

A murmur went through the room. Darius didn't slow down.

He showed them Isabella's cashier records next, the forty million dollars moving through the Moreau Grand in small deposits disguised as gambling money. Then he showed them Orrery's access history. "This company had been asleep for twenty years. Three weeks ago, someone woke it up and logged in eleven times. Every single login came from one place." He clicked, and an address appeared on the screen. "An internet address registered to the executive floor of this building. Ellingham Tower."

Jasper's smile had gone fixed and thin.

"And here's the part Mr. Ellingham's slides left out," Darius said. "Where the money actually went." He clicked again. A list filled the screen. "Two point four million in payments on a yacht called the Silver Tide, registered to Jasper Ellingham. Six million in gambling debts, paid off in his name. And two hundred and ten thousand dollars at Aldridge and Finch jewelers for a diamond bracelet with a sapphire clasp."

He turned toward the long table. "Sienna, would you raise your left wrist for everyone, please?"

Every camera swung toward her. Sienna flinched and pulled her hand into her lap, covering it with the other. She didn't raise it.

"These are just numbers on a screen," Jasper said sharply into his microphone. "He could have invented all of it."

"The casino records are authentic."

The voice came from the back of the room. Isabella Moreau had risen from a seat by the door, elegant in black, and every head turned toward her. "I'm the head of House Moreau," she said calmly. "Those are my records. I will swear to them in any court in this city."

The room turned completely. It happened all at once, like a tide changing direction. Pensioners rose from their seats and surged toward the stage, shouting at Jasper now, waving their signs at him, and the security guards had to link arms to hold them back. Grace Nwosu hadn't moved. She was staring at Darius with her hand over her mouth. On the stage, Sienna's hands were shaking so badly she couldn't hide them anymore.

Jasper stood up so fast his chair fell over. For a second he looked lost. Then he grabbed the microphone from the chairman's hand, and his voice boomed through the speakers.

"You want the truth?" he shouted. "Then here's the truth! Barnaby Larkin wasn't some poor old watchmaker. He was a loan shark. For sixty years he ran a secret lending empire called the Larkin Tally, and half the rich families in this city owe it money. Billions of dollars, hidden from the tax office and from all of you." He pointed at Darius with a shaking hand. "And now he controls all of it. Ask him. Go on, ask him!"

For a moment, the whole auditorium was silent. Then every camera in the room turned to Darius, and the reporters began shouting questions all at once.

Darius didn't look at them. He looked up at the glass gallery above the seats.

Severin Ellingham hadn't moved. He stood exactly where he had been all morning, perfectly calm, and he was smiling down at the chaos with quiet satisfaction.

That was when Darius understood. Exposing the Tally had never been Jasper's idea. It had been Severin's from the very beginning.