Seventy-Four Billion Reasons

Chapter Ten: Nine Days

Every camera in the auditorium swung toward Darius, and the room filled with shouted questions. Is it true? Does the Larkin Tally exist? How much money? Which families?

He stood on the stage with the microphone in his hand and understood exactly how easy it would be to make this go away. The Tally had no public records. Its loans had never touched a bank, and its debtors would never admit a thing. One calm sentence would do it. A desperate man caught stealing pension money will say anything, he could tell them, and half the room would believe him by the end of the day.

But Grace Nwosu was standing in the fifth row with her hand pressed to her mouth, and two hundred pensioners were watching his face. He had promised them the truth, and he couldn't stand here and lie to them less than an hour after proving that everyone else had.

Beside the stage, Freya took a step toward him. "Darius," she said under her breath. "Don't."

He raised the microphone anyway.

"Yes," he said. "The Larkin Tally exists."

The noise rose so sharply that he had to wait for it to settle.

"For sixty years, my grandfather lent money to families and companies that no bank in Ostley would touch," he went on. "When they were failing, when their creditors had given up, he saved them. Fair terms, no threats, no scandal. Then he went home every night and fixed watches for twenty dollars." He looked slowly across the rows, at the faces in the expensive seats near the front. "Some of the men in this room built their fortunes on his loans. A few of them came to his funeral. Today they're pretending they've never heard his name."

Several well-dressed men suddenly became busy with their phones.

"I'm the Keeper now," Darius said. "So here's the first thing I'll do with it." He turned to face the pensioners directly. "Starting tomorrow morning, the Larkin Tally will repay every one of you in full. Every pension, every missed payment, down to the last cent. You won't wait for the courts, and you won't wait for Ellingham Holdings to feel generous."

For a moment, nobody spoke. Then someone began to clap, and then a dozen more, and then the whole room was on its feet. In the fifth row, Grace Nwosu sat down heavily in her chair, covered her face with both hands and began to cry.

Commissioner Penrose had been watching from the side aisle all morning, his cap tucked under his arm. He could read a room as well as anyone in Ostley, and he could see which way the wind was blowing. He signaled to the officers by the doors, and four of them climbed onto the stage.

"Jasper Ellingham," Penrose announced, "you're under arrest for theft, fraud and the forgery of financial records."

Jasper backed away from the officers until he hit the edge of the table. "You can't do this," he said, his voice cracking. "Do you know who I am?" When they turned him around and cuffed him, he twisted toward the glass gallery. "Father! Father, tell them!"

Up in the gallery, Severin didn't move. The officers led Jasper down the stage steps and out through the side door, still shouting, and his father never even glanced at him.

Sienna had risen from her chair, her face streaming with tears. She hurried toward Penrose with her hands clasped in front of her. "Commissioner, please, I had no idea what he was doing. He manipulated me. He lied to me about everything, I swear."

A quiet woman in a gray suit stepped forward from behind the commissioner and showed Sienna a badge from the Financial Crimes Unit. "Then you won't mind answering a few questions, Ms. Fairfax," she said. "Starting with the bracelet."

Sienna's tears stopped. She looked at her wrist, then at the cameras, then at Darius. Nobody came to help her. The investigator took her gently by the elbow and led her out the same door Jasper had gone through.

Darius came down the stage steps into a crowd of pensioners who wanted to shake his hand. Before he reached them, someone grabbed his sleeve.

It was Cordelia Fairfax. Her pearls were crooked, her makeup smeared, and her voice had lost all its polish. "Darius, please. You know about our loan, the one that saved Fairfax Construction. If it's called in now, after all this, we'll lose everything. The house, the company, all of it." Her grip tightened. "We were almost family. Surely that still means something to you."

Darius looked down at her hand on his arm, and then at her face.

"At my engagement party," he said quietly, "you seated my grandfather beside the kitchen door, as far from your guests as the room allowed." He gently removed her hand. "He was the one who saved your company, Mrs. Fairfax. You just never bothered to ask his name."

He walked past her. Behind him, Reginald Fairfax sat down in the front row and put his head in his hands.

It should have felt like victory. The thief was in handcuffs, the pensioners were cheering, and his name would be clean by nightfall. For one long breath, Darius let himself believe it was over.

Then the crowd parted, and Severin Ellingham walked down the aisle toward him.

He had come down from the gallery without hurrying, as calm as he had been at the funeral, a slim leather portfolio under one arm. He stopped in front of Darius and took out two documents.

"The first," Severin said pleasantly, "is an emergency order from the Ostley Financial Authority. It was issued at 10:47 this morning, six minutes after you confessed on live television to running an unlicensed lending operation worth billions. Every asset of the Larkin Tally is frozen, pending a full investigation."

Darius took it. The seal was real, and so was the signature.

"The second is a formal notice from House Ellingham." Severin handed it over. "Under the Covenant, a Keeper who brings public disgrace on the Tally may face an early vote. You have just done so, in front of every camera in the city. The vote of the Five Houses will be held in seven days, rather than twenty-one."

Darius looked from one document to the other, while behind him the pensioners went on celebrating a promise he could no longer keep. He had pledged forty million dollars from accounts he could no longer touch. In one week, the Five Houses would decide whether the Tally lived or died.

Severin leaned close and shook his hand, his crow ring cold against Darius's skin. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper.

"Your father chose honesty too," he said. "He lasted nine days."