Supreme Authority

Chapter 8

"Is it?" Alexander said again.

He held the settlement up so the whole street could see it. Then he tore it in half.

The sound was loud in the quiet morning.

He put the halves together and tore them again. And again. Then he opened his hand, and the pieces drifted down onto the lawyer's polished shoes.

Across the street, a curtain moved. Somebody's dog barked.

The lawyer looked down at the scraps of paper. When he looked up again, his smile was back, but it was thinner now.

"That was a copy, Mr. Sinclair," he said. "I have twelve more in my briefcase."

"Then you'd better bring a bigger briefcase."

"You think this is a game?" The lawyer straightened his cuffs, one, then the other. "My name is Wayne Foster. Mr. Price pays me to win. And I always win."

"Not today."

"No," Foster agreed pleasantly. "Today I lose a piece of paper. But I filed this morning. Within the hour, the court freezes every account your father has. The company's too. Every card. Every cent. He won't be able to buy a loaf of bread without asking a judge."

Helen made a small sound behind him.

"For how long?" Alexander asked.

"Until the case is over." Foster smiled. "Cases like this can take a very long time. Your mother will be eating at a soup kitchen by spring."

Alexander almost smiled. Freeze it, then. Frozen money can't be stolen. And it would not even last. A few days, a week at most. The papers had no hole in them for a judge to hold it any longer, and while it sat in the court, his parents would never need a cent of it.

"You'll lose."

"Will I? You have no money, no lawyer, and no name. Mr. Price has all three." Foster picked up his briefcase. "Have a lovely day, Mrs. Sinclair. I'm sorry your son is so rude."

He walked down the path to a silver car, climbed in and drove away.

The street was very quiet.

One by one, the curtains across the road fell back into place.

---

His mother's kitchen smelled the way it always had. Coffee, and lemon soap, and something baking that she had forgotten in the oven. The radio on the windowsill was playing an old song very softly.

Helen took the tray out of the oven. The cookies were burnt black at the edges.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, look at that."

She put the tray down and burst into tears.

Alexander put his arms around her. She was smaller than he remembered. In his first life he had not held her once after the company was gone. Not once, until it was too late.

"I'm sorry, Mom," he said into her hair. "I'm so sorry."

"You didn't have to come," she whispered. "You didn't have to stand up to that man for us."

"You're my mother."

She cried harder.

Richard stood in the kitchen doorway with his arms folded. He had not said one word.

"Dad," Alexander said.

"Don't," his father rasped. "Don't you dare 'Dad' me. When you married that woman, you spent an entire year begging me to hand over my life's work. You swore on your life you would protect it. I signed it all over because you were my son."

"I know."

"Then yesterday your assistant calls me, shoving papers in my face—sign here, sign there—claiming you wanted everything transferred back to me, backdated by three months." Richard’s hands trembled with fury. "And today? The lawyers tell me you threw it all away, and she's taking every last dime in the divorce. They're stripping us bare and freezing every single account! What is this, Alexander? What kind of sick game are you playing with our lives?"

"It isn't a game," Alexander said steadily. "And I'm never going to let that happen."

"Then what the hell is it?" Richard demanded.

Alexander looked at his father. At the grey in his hair. At the builder's hands that had built a company from nothing, and had nearly lost it because of him.

"It was always yours, Dad," he said quietly. "I was a fool for two years. I won't be one again."

Richard stared at him.

Then he turned away to face the window, and his shoulders moved once, the way they did when he did not want anyone to see his face.

Helen's phone buzzed on the counter. She read the message from the bank, and her face crumpled.

"The freeze," she said, wiping her eyes. "It already happened. Your father's accounts. The company's. Every one of them. What will we do?"

He had known this was coming since the hotel room. That was why he was here.

"It won't last." Alexander took his new phone out. "I promise you. Only for a while. And until then..."

Her own savings account was not on the lawyer's list. Only his father's name and the company were. He sent something into it from his new account. Helen's old phone buzzed again beside the burnt cookies.

She picked it up, read the screen, and went white.

It was ten million dollars.

"Alexander. Where did you get this?"

"Don't ask, Mom. It's clean. It's for groceries. And for Dad's pills. Until everything comes back to you."

"But you have nothing."

"I have a little luck." He kissed her forehead. "That's all."

Ten million was nothing. In a few months his parents would never have to look at a bank screen again. And once his cultivation came back, he could give them the one thing they never had in his first life.

Time. Years and years of it.

At the window, his father still had not turned around. But he was listening. Alexander could tell.

At the front door, Alexander stopped.

"Alexander."

His father's voice, behind him. Rough and low.

"Yes, Dad?"

A long pause.

"Eat something," Richard said. "You look terrible."

It was the first kind thing his father had said to him in two years. Alexander had to stand very still for a moment before he could answer.

"I will."

---

The bank on the corner was cold and bright and smelled of new carpet. Alexander waited in line behind an old man counting coins, then asked for two hundred thousand dollars in cash from his new account.

The teller looked at him, at his wrinkled shirt and his cheap phone, and checked the account twice. Then she counted it out in thick bundles and slid a fat brown envelope under the glass.

Two hundred thousand. Exactly what Victoria had asked for.

He tucked it inside his jacket and walked out into the sun.

His phone rang. It was Sophia.

"Are they all right?" she asked at once.

"For now."

"Alexander, listen." Her voice dropped. "Mom just called from the salon. Victoria sent word to the whole family. At Grandma's feast tonight, Derek wants his apology."

"Let me guess. On my knees."

"In front of everyone," Sophia said. "And Victoria says if you don't come, she'll call the police from the dinner table."