2026-11-04 22:33:40
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Chapter 29
Alexander set the fruit platter down on the table. "Enjoy your evening.""No. No way." Carter was laughing so loudly that the next table turned around. He kept the phone pointed at Alexander's face. "Gina, Owen, look at this! It's the Cavendish ex-husband! Carrying fruit!"The girl in the white dress laughed. The tall young man smiled behind his glass."Wait, wait." Carter wiped his eyes with one hand. "First Victoria throws you out. Then you move in with my little cousin Sophia and sleep on her mother's floor. And now this?" He turned to the girl. "Gina, I told you about him. The man who lost everything in one afternoon."Gina looked at Alexander with soft, pitying eyes and held out her hand. "Hi. I'm Gina. Don't mind Carter. I think it's brave, honestly. Working."Alexander looked at the hand, then at her face. Two seconds ago she had been laughing with Carter. He didn't take it."Excuse me. I have tables waiting."He walked away. Behind him, Gina's soft face went hard. "Well! Rude.
Chapter 28
"Let her go," Alexander said.The man smelled of beer from three steps away. He looked at a young man in a wrinkled shirt, alone on a dark path, and he laughed."Mind your own business, kid. Walk on."Alexander kept coming.The man stopped laughing. He looked at Alexander's face, and something in it made him let go of the woman all at once. She dropped onto the wet grass. Then the man turned and ran, away along the dark path.Alexander didn't chase him. He flicked a stone off the path with the toe of his shoe and kicked it.The stone flew like a bullet and hit the man square between the shoulders. He went down on his face with a cry.Alexander's one grain of spirit energy had gone into that kick. It was a small thing, but it was enough for a drunk.The man got up on his hands and knees, gasping. He looked back with pure hate. "You've got no idea whose man you just hit, boy," he spat. Then he stumbled up and was gone into the dark.Alexander knelt by the woman. "Are you all right?"She
Chapter 27
In the middle of the silent bank, Alexander gave the smallest shake of his head.Nobody else saw it. Vincent saw it.His bow stopped halfway down. For one second he hung there, bent over in the middle of the bank. Then he reached down and picked his cigar up off the marble, as if that was what he had bent down for all along.He straightened up, turned away from Alexander, and bowed to Emily instead."My apologies, Miss Ford," he said. "He was my man. The blame is mine."Emily blinked. "That's fair of you, Mr. Hale.""Only what's right."Then Vincent turned to the man on the floor. "Look at me when I'm talking to you."Simmons lifted his swollen face."Don't say sorry to me," Vincent said. "If the young lady doesn't forgive you, you won't see tomorrow. Crawl. To her, not to me."Simmons's eyes went up to Alexander's face, and whatever he saw there made him crawl the long way round. He crawled across the marble to Emily's feet and knelt there, with his tie torn and blood down his shirt.
Chapter 26
The guard at the glass doors turned the lock. The click rang loud in the quiet bank.Nobody in the queue moved. The two guards on the floor sat up slowly, holding their jaws. Simmons dabbed at his lip with a handkerchief and smiled at nobody.With shaking fingers, Emily texted Sophia three words. "Bank. Trouble. Come."Then she put her phone away and stood closer to Alexander.Before the tea had dried on Simmons's shirt, two long black cars pulled up outside the glass doors. The guard hurried to unlock them.Six men in dark suits came in first, and the queue pressed back against the wall. The smell of cigar smoke reached the counters before he did. Then Vincent Hale walked in, rings on every finger, a cigar between two of them.His name went down the queue in a whisper. Vincent Hale. The man who owns the Silver Crown. A man near the rope gave Alexander a look of pure pity."Now you'll see," Simmons said. "Now you'll all see."Vincent didn't look at him. He looked around the lobby, at
Chapter 25
"Then they'll have me," Alexander said.His father looked up from the face-down page. "Just like that?""They're stupid. Even if they get me, they'll only find I have nothing. And a man with nothing has nothing to share with them. I'll handle this, Father."His father held his eyes for a long moment. Then he nodded once. "I believe in you. But come find me if you need help."Alexander left Evergrande with the letter folded in his pocket. He said nothing about it at home. Sophia had carried enough this week.That night, in the little room over the laundromat, the dryers downstairs were still thumping when Sophia's phone lit up on the floor between them. She listened. Then she sat straight up."It's Emily," she said. "She's at the hospital. It's her mother. Let's go."The ward smelled of bleach and boiled vegetables. Emily stood at the night desk in her cleaner's overalls, her mop bucket still beside her. A doctor in a white coat was reading a chart."Her heart can't wait for the list,"
Chapter 24
"A full hearing," Alexander said.Charles nodded, laid the second page of the letter on the corner of the desk, and went out. The door clicked shut behind him.His father pointed at the chair across the desk, and Alexander sat. Fifty floors above the street, the office was very quiet. It smelled of cold coffee and new carpet.Richard Sinclair set the letter down between them and kept one hand flat on it, as if it might blow away."Her new lawyers want the whole company looked at again," he said. "From the first brick. The transfer to me, the money, all of it." He rubbed his eyes. "Your mother swears you knew the freeze would lift. It did. And now this."Then he looked up and asked, very quietly, "Son. What do we do?"Alexander's throat went tight. In two lives, his father had never once asked him that. In his first life, the old man had carried every trouble alone, right up to the day he died poor.He wanted to hug him. He didn't. His father would only have been embarrassed."We fight
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