Page 36 of His Verdict

The sheer scope of his power is terrifying. It isn’t just about having money or influence. It is about having the ability to alter the official record of the world, to dictate what is true and what is not.

I hear his footsteps behind me, soft on the concrete floor. He has come out to check on me, drawn by the sound of the TV. He comes to a stop just behind the sofa. I don't have to turn around to know he is watching the same report, his expression as calm and unruffled as ever.

I don't take my eyes off the screen, off the smiling face of the dead man whose last, surprised breath I witnessed. All the questions from the last forty-eight hours, all the confusion and terror and disbelief, coalesce into a single, simple, overwhelming point.

I turn the television off with the remote, plunging the room back into a heavy, expectant silence. I slowly turn my head, my eyes meeting his over the back of the sofa. My voice, when I speak, is not a scream or a sob. It is a whisper, stripped bare of all emotion, a question from the very bottom of the abyss.

“Who are you?”

He doesn't move. When he finally speaks, his voice is not the one he uses for business or seduction. It is a flat, stripped-down tone of pure fact, the voice of a man stating his own immutable nature.

“My name is Jasper Donovan Sinclair.”

The three words land in the quiet room like stones dropped into a deep well. Sinclair. The name echoes in the hollow space inside my chest. He watches my face, gauging my reaction, knowing the first two names mean nothing, but the third… the third is the key.

“Most of the city, the parts of it that matter, at least, know me by my family name,” he continues, his tone clinical. “Jasper Sinclair.”

A block of ice forms in my stomach, so cold it burns. The blood seems to drain from my face, a dizzying, sickening rush. Sinclair. It isn't a name I read in the business section. It is a name you hear in whispers, in hushed, cautionary tales told by old-money lawyers and jaded journalists after too many drinks. It’s a name synonymous with a power so vast and so dark it is spoken of like a myth, a modern-day horror story.

They are like a mafia family, but not. That is the phrase I heard once, a long time ago, from a cynical old prosecutor. They aren't common criminals; their reach is too immense, too deeply embedded in the very fabric of the city’s political and economic life. They don't just break laws; they exist in a space above them, a sovereign power that operates by its own brutal set of rules.

“I am the only son,” he says, confirming the half-remembered rumors swirling in my terrified mind. “The heir. The family business will be mine upon my father’s death.”

His father. The patriarch. A man whose face has never been reliably photographed but whose name is a legend in federal law enforcement circles.

“My father,” Jasper says, as if reading my thoughts, “has been a person of significant interest to the FBI for decades. They’ve convened grand juries. They’ve turned informants. They’ve spent tens of millions of dollars trying to build a case against him, trying to take him down.” He pauses, and a small, cold, humorless smile touches his lips. “But nothing ever sticks.”

And there it is. The family motto. The source of their terrifying power. Impunity. The murder I witnessed was not the arrogant act of a single, powerful man. It was business as usual. It was the Sinclair way. The cleanup crew, the fabricated news story, the overnight dismissal of my Bar investigation—it all clicks into place with a horrifying, sickening clarity. These are not difficult problems for a Sinclair. They are matters of simple, logistical housekeeping.

I am no longer just a lawyer who has been compromised by a ruthless client. I am no longer just a woman who is sleeping with a dangerous man. I am shackled to a dynasty of untouchable monsters, and its heir has just claimed me as his own.

I finally understand.

I am well and truly fucked.

Chapter 17

The name hangs in the air between us, a toxic, invisible cloud.Sinclair.

It is a name that re-contextualizes everything. My abduction into this life isn't the whim of a rogue billionaire. It is the calculated acquisition by the heir to a criminal dynasty. The murder I witnessed isn't an anomaly; it is a business transaction, mundane and necessary. The law, my law, is nothing but an irrelevant whisper in the face of the hurricane of their power.

In the first hours after the revelation, my mind, in a desperate act of self-preservation, begins to formulate escape plans. They are frantic, childish fantasies. I see myself slipping out of the penthouse in the dead of night, taking a bus to a nameless town in the Midwest, changing my name, working as a waitress, disappearing. I will dye my hair, wear glasses, become a ghost.

But the fantasy always curdles into a nightmare. I see their faces—not Jasper’s, but the faces of a hundred men I’ve never met, men in dark suits and with cold eyes—waiting for me at the bus station in that nameless town. I see my face on a missing person’s report that isn't a plea for my return, but a wanted poster for his private army. I see my mother’s terrified face as men in those same suits knock on her door, asking questions.

The Sinclairs don’t just have reach. They have roots. They are woven into the very fabric of the country, a cancer in the bone marrow of the system. There is no running from that.There is no town so small, no identity so new, that it can hide me. Running isn't an escape; it is just a choice to die tired.

The realization settles over me not with a crash, but with a slow, cold, quiet dread. It seeps into my bones, chilling me from the inside out. There is no door. There is no exit. There is only this penthouse, this man, this life. Survival is the only option left on the table. And survival, I know with a sickening certainty, means acclimation.

So begins the long, silent week.

I become a ghost in his home. I move through the vast, empty rooms on autopilot, my body performing the mundane tasks of life—showering, eating the food he places before me, breathing—while my mind is a million miles away, lost in a fog of shock and horror. I am disassociated, a spectator to my own hollowed-out existence.

He is a constant, quiet presence. He has, with a terrifying intuition, understood that the best way to manage my trauma is not with force or seduction, but with a steady, unyielding patience. He doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t push me to talk. He simply… exists in the space with me, a silent, watchful warden. He works at his desk for hours, the soft click of his keyboard the only sound in the apartment. He reads, he makes quiet phone calls, he cooks.

He is always there, a constant reminder of my captivity, and a strange, anchoring presence in the chaos of my thoughts. It is a masterful campaign of normalization. He is acclimating me to himself, letting his monstrosity become a simple, unremarkable fact of my daily life, like the view from the window or the temperature in the room.

It bothers him, I can tell, that I am so subdued. I see it in the slight tightening of his jaw when I stare blankly at the television for hours, not registering a single image. I see it in the flicker of frustration in his eyes when I only pick at the exquisite meals he prepares. I am a beautiful, priceless statue he has acquired, but I am lifeless, and that is not what he wants. He doesn’t want a broken doll. He wants the woman who fought him, the woman who shoved him in a fit of rage, the woman who screamed his name. He wantsme, and this hollow shell I have become is a deep, personal disappointment to him. But he is patient. He is waiting for me to come back to life.