Page 53 of His Verdict
The thought is a shard of glass in my gut. Is that all I am? After everything? After the choices I've made, the lines I've crossed, the piece of my soul I have irrevocably given him?
I stop pacing and sink onto the edge of the perfectly made bed. The fabric is cool and impersonal against my skin. I stare at my own reflection in the dark glass of the windows. I see a ghost. A pale, terrified woman in a designer suit that feels like a costume. The idealistic public defender who wanted to fight for justice is so long dead she might as well be a myth. In her place is this hollow, trembling thing, waiting to find out if her owner won the right to keep her.
I don’t know how much time has passed when I hear it.
A sound.
The faint, metallic turn of the doorknob.
My breath catches in my throat. My heart seizes. Every muscle in my body locks, preparing for the final verdict. I am too scared to turn, too scared to see who stands in that doorway. Is it Alistair, his face impassive, come to escort me to my own execution? Is it Corvus, the gun still in his hand, ready to finish the job himself?
The door swings open.
I force my head to turn, a slow, creaking movement, my neck muscles screaming in protest.
It’s Jasper.
Relief crashes through me with the force of a physical blow, so potent and overwhelming it leaves me dizzy, gasping. He’s alive. He’s standing. He’s here.
But the relief is immediately chased away by a fresh spike of fear as he steps fully into the room and the light catches him.
He’s a wreck.
A thin line of blood traces a path from a fresh split in his lower lip down his chin. A dark, angry red stain blossoms on the shoulder of his pristine white shirt, just below the collar. He moves with a stiffness, a pained rigidity that wasn't there before. He met his father’s monstrous rage not with words, but with fists. And from the looks of it, it was a brutal, bloody affair.
He closes the door behind him and leans against it for a moment, his eyes closed. He looks utterly exhausted, drained to the bone.
The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, a raw, horrified whisper.
"Are you okay?"
His eyes snap open. They are glacial. Colder and harder than I have ever seen them. It pins me in place. It silences me more effectively than a hand over my mouth. The unspokenmessage is crystal clear.I am not your concern. You are mine. Do not ask me questions I have no intention of answering.
The words die in my throat. I swallow them down, the concern turning to ash on my tongue.
“We’re having dinner with my father in half an hour,” he says, his voice rough, scraped raw. He pushes himself off the door and walks toward the closet, his movements measured, deliberate, as if controlling a great deal of pain.
He pulls off his jacket, tossing it onto a chair. Then he begins to unbutton his shirt. The bloodstain is stark against the white fabric. As he shrugs it off, I see the price of my life printed on his skin.
A constellation of fresh, ugly bruises is blooming across his ribs and torso. Deep, violent purples and angry reds. One particularly nasty one is swelling high on his cheekbone, a dark counterpoint to his split lip. The fight wasn't a scuffle. It was a savage, unrestrained brawl. He took a beating. For me.
He doesn’t look at me as he goes into the enormous walk-in closet, emerging a moment later with a fresh shirt of dark, charcoal grey silk. He puts it on, his movements still stiff, and begins to button it.
I just sit there on the edge of the bed, silent and still.
The dining room is another exercise in cavernous, gothic intimidation. The table is a long, dark slab of polished mahoganythat could easily seat thirty. We are three. Corvus sits at the head, a king on his throne. Jasper takes the seat to his right. I am placed to Jasper’s left, directly under the cold, assessing gaze of his father.
Alistair and another silent, uniformed staff member serve the meal with the quiet, ghostly efficiency of morticians preparing a body. The clink of silver on porcelain is unnervingly loud in the heavy silence.
I noticed it the moment he entered the room. Corvus Sinclair did not walk away from his confrontation with his son unscathed. He has a pronounced limp, favoring his right leg. There’s a small, precise nick above his left eyebrow, meticulously cleaned but still stark against his pale skin. Jasper fought back. Hard.
“The markets in Asia are volatile,” Corvus says, cutting into a piece of roasted duck with surgical precision. His voice is calm, conversational, as if he hadn’t been pointing a gun at my head less than two hours ago. “The instability in Hong Kong is making our investors nervous.”
“It’s a calculated risk,” Jasper replies, his own voice a low, even murmur. He takes a sip of his wine. “The potential for return outweighs the temporary unrest. We’re insulated.”
They talk about business. About mergers and acquisitions, about hostile takeovers and emerging markets. They speak a language of power and profit, a casual, amoral dialogue about the movement of billions of dollars as if they were discussing the weather. The sheer, banal normalcy of it is more terrifying than any shouting match would be.
I am a ghost at this table. I keep my eyes on my plate. I eat, even though the food tastes like ash in my mouth. I lift my fork, I chew, I swallow. I perform the motions of a living person, but inside, I am frozen solid. I am acutely aware of Corvus’s eyes on me. He watches me intermittently, his gaze a cold, physical weight. He is assessing me, still. Trying to see what his son sees. Trying to calculate my value.