THE HEIR'S REVENGE

chapter 110

"Tell me something that has nothing to do with any of this," Yemi said again, as we walked.

I thought about it for a moment, and found, somewhat to my own surprise, that I did have something.

"When I was small," I said, "before my mother died, before any of it — there was a stretch of maybe two years where things were genuinely good. Not easy. We didn't have money, and we lived in a single room above a shop that smelled permanently of fried dough from the bakery downstairs. But she used to take me to a park near where we lived, every Sunday, without fail, even when it was raining, and we'd sit on this one specific bench because she said it had the best view of the whole park, though I never actually understood what she meant, because from where I sat it just looked like an ordinary bench with an ordinary view."

"What was actually good about it," Yemi asked.

"I didn't understand it then," I said. "I think I understand it now. It wasn't the view. It was that for one hour, every week, she wasn't working, and I wasn't waiting for her to finish working, and we just sat there together and she'd tell me stories, made-up ones, about a boy who lived in the clouds and could never quite figure out how to get down to visit the people he loved, because every time he tried, the wind would carry him somewhere new." I paused, surprised by how easily the memory had come back to me, whole and warm, after so long. "I used to think that story was sad. Now I think she was telling me something true about herself, in the only language she had left, without either of us understanding it at the time."

Yemi was quiet for a moment, walking beside me.

"That's a beautiful memory," she said finally. "Thank you for telling me."

"I haven't thought about that bench in years," I admitted. "I don't even know if it's still there."

"Maybe we should find out sometime," Yemi said. "Not today. But sometime."

I looked at her, something warm settling into the tight place in my chest that had been there since I woke that morning.

"I'd like that," I said.

We walked for a long time after that, and true to her word, Yemi steered us away from the trial every time it threatened to surface again, asking instead about small ordinary things — what I had wanted to be, as a child, before any of this had happened; whether I had ever had a pet, growing up, and whether I might want one now, given how much space the mansion had; what Lily's face had looked like the first time she saw the butterfly release, described in enough detail that we both ended up laughing, remembering it together.

By the time we came back inside, nearly two hours had passed, and I realised, with something like genuine surprise, that I had not thought about the jury room even once during the entire walk.

---

Gerald called just before noon.

I saw his name appear on my phone and felt my stomach drop immediately, the reflexive assumption that any call now, from anyone connected to the trial, could only mean news, and I answered it faster than I had answered anything in weeks.

"Ethan," Gerald said, and something in the easy, unhurried way he said my name told me, before he had said anything further, that this was not the call I had braced myself for. "I'm sorry, I should have opened with this — I don't have any news about the trial. I know exactly the assumption you'd make if I called you today, and I didn't want you sitting with that for even a few extra seconds."

I let out a breath I had not realised I was holding.

"Thank you for that," I said.

"I actually called about something else entirely," Gerald said. "The east district acquisition papers finally cleared their final review this morning. I know it's poor timing, given everything else, but I thought you might appreciate hearing about something that had a definite, uncomplicated answer, for once."

I almost laughed, the specific gratitude of it landing somewhere unexpected.

"That's actually exactly what I needed to hear today," I said. "Thank you, Gerald. For thinking of that."

"I've watched enough people go through difficult waiting periods over the years," Gerald said, and there was something warm underneath his usual careful professionalism. "Sometimes the kindest thing anyone can do is remind you the rest of your life is still moving forward, even while the hardest part of it is standing still."

We talked for a few more minutes about the acquisition, ordinary business details that required nothing more of me than half my attention, and by the time we hung up I found that the morning, which had stretched ahead of me at seven o'clock like an impossible, formless expanse, had somehow already carried me most of the way to lunch.

---

Sophia texted a little after one, a short, careful message that read simply: *Thinking of you today. However it goes, you did everything right. — S*

I stared at it for a long moment before I replied, something in the plainness of it landing with more weight than a longer message might have carried.

*Thank you,* I wrote back. *That means more than you probably know.*

*I know exactly how much it means,* she wrote back almost immediately. *I've spent my whole life on the other side of the family this trial is about. Watching you build something real out of it, instead of just burning it all down out of anger, has actually taught me something about what I want the rest of my own life to look like.*

I sat with that for a while, the strange, unlikely thread of it — Sophia Pierce, who had once posted a video captioned *when the help forgets where he belongs*, now offering me something that read like genuine wisdom, hard-won, still raw around the edges.

*Come for dinner sometime this week,* I wrote back. *Once this is over. Lily's been asking about you.*

*I'd like that,* Sophia replied. *Tell her I said hello.*

---

Brandon checked in around two, not with a call but by simply appearing at the front gate, which had become, over these past months, enough of a familiar occurrence that the security team let him through without a second thought.

I found him in the kitchen when I came downstairs, drinking coffee with Mrs Park while she narrated, at length and with visible frustration, her ongoing dissatisfaction with the third attempt at whatever new recipe she had been perfecting all week.

"I told her I'm not qualified to judge," Brandon said, when I came in. "But apparently my opinion was required anyway."

"It tastes fine to me," I offered, glancing at the small dish on the counter.

"Fine is not the standard," Mrs Park said, with the particular severity she reserved for matters of genuine importance. "Fine means I have not yet solved it."

Brandon caught my eye over her head, and something passed between us — not quite a laugh, but close to it, the shared recognition of two people who had both, in their own separate ways, learned exactly how seriously this household took the business of making the ordinary things right, even in the middle of everything extraordinary happening around them.

"I didn't come for the cooking crisis," Brandon said, once Mrs Park had returned her full attention to the stove. "I wanted to check the security schedule for the rest of the week. If a verdict does come down, there's a real chance the courthouse gets swarmed regardless of what it is — Victoria's people or the press, either way, it's going to be chaos for at least a day or two afterward."

"You think it could get worse than it's already been," I asked.

"I think a guilty verdict brings out a different kind of crowd than an ongoing trial does," Brandon said carefully. "People show up who weren't following the daily coverage but wanted to be present for the ending. I want to make sure we're prepared for that, whichever direction it goes."

I appreciated, not for the first time, how thoroughly Brandon had transformed from the person who had once stood in the middle of a basketball field promising to make my life miserable into someone who now thought, unprompted, about exactly the kind of contingency planning that had kept this family safe through an entire year of escalating threats.

We went over the details together for the better part of an hour — which entrances would be covered, how the team would coordinate if the verdict came at an inconvenient hour, what the plan would be for Lily's school pickup on whatever day the news finally broke. It was, I found, exactly the kind of practical, concrete work that gave the anxious, formless waiting somewhere useful to go, and I was grateful to Brandon for bringing it, whether or not he had planned it that carefully.