Page 57 of His Verdict
He doesn’t answer.
He simply turns, his face a mask of stone, and walks away. I hear him speak to his driver in the foyer, his voice a low, clipped command. Then the heavy front door of the penthouse closes with a soft, final click.
And he is gone.
Not just from the room. A check of his closet confirms it. He didn’t just leave the argument. He left the city. He leftme.
For the first time in months, I am alone.
Truly, utterly alone. No invisible leash of his presence wrapped around my throat. The rage was so profound, his sense of betrayal so complete, that he has severed the connection entirely. He has cut me loose.
For the first day, I do nothing. I sit on the sofa, staring at the cityscape, a glass of his expensive whiskey sweating in my hand. My mind is a blank, white field of static. The question ofwhat he must think of me—disloyal, reckless—is too painful to contemplate.
On the second day, a new thought begins to form, a dangerous, seductive whisper in the silence.
I could run.
The idea is so stark, so simple, it takes my breath away. There is a fortune in untraceable bearer bonds in the safe, a parting gift for my "loyalty" after the Meridian acquisition. I have a passport with a new name, courtesy of his own forgers, tucked away for an emergency that was always meant to behisemergency, not mine. I could walk out that door right now. I could be on a flight to a country with no extradition treaty by morning. I could disappear. I could call Agent Jennings, take the deal she’d offered. I could trade my testimony for a new life. A life of fear, yes, but a life of freedom.
The old Olivia would have done it. She would have seen this as a miracle. A divine intervention. A last, desperate chance to claw her way back to the light.
But the old Olivia is dead.
Running now isn’t freedom.
No. I will not run. I will wait.
On the third day, the test I didn't know I was waiting for arrives.
My personal cell rings, a number I don’t recognize. I answer, my voice cautious.
“Sutton.”
“Olivia? It’s David Morrison.” The CFO. His voice is a thin, reedy thing, frayed with panic. “We need to talk. Not on the phone.”
My entire body goes still. The static in my mind vanishes, replaced by a cold, diamond-hard clarity. “What about?”
“The Feds,” he whispers, his voice cracking. “They brought me in again. They’re squeezing me, Olivia. They know something. They’re offering me full immunity. For me, for my family. They want everything.”
The first link in the chain is about to snap.
“I need to meet you,” he says, his words tumbling over each other in a frantic rush. “The Mid-City Grill. One hour. Just to talk. Please.”
“I’ll be there,” I say, my voice a calm, steady counterpoint to his hysteria. I hang up the phone.
I stand and walk to my closet. I choose a black dress.
I take a taxi to the restaurant. The driver makes small talk. I respond with polite, empty phrases.
Morrison is already there, tucked into a corner booth. He’s aged ten years since I saw him in The Nocturne. His face is pale and slick with sweat. His hands tremble as he lifts a glass of water to his lips.
“Thank you for coming,” he breathes as I slide into the booth opposite him, audio jammer already at work. I’m not going to risk anything I could say to be used against me later.
I give a curt nod. “You said you wanted to talk, David. So talk.”
He lays it all out. The FBI has leverage on him—some old insider trading charge they’re willing to make disappear. They’re offering him and his family placement in the Witness Protection Program. A new life, a clean slate. All he has to do is tell them the truth about Arthur Vance’s death. He has to give them Jasper.
“I can’t do it,” he whispers, but his eyes tell me he already has. He’s just here to negotiate the terms of his betrayal. “My wife… my kids… I can’t put them through that. But I can’t go to prison either.”