Dominic's POV
In nine days, the world turns over.
I watch it happen from a chair in Torres's office, with a paper cup of bad coffee and my wife's hand in mine.
The grand jury indicts on Tuesday. Seventeen counts against Augustus Brandt, from conspiracy to murder to wire fraud. Twelve against Edmund Vance, who has signed a cooperation agreement so thorough that Torres jokes he's offered to testify against his own mother. Ellis Drummond, cornered in federal custody, discovers an unexpected talent for memory. He gives up Rusk's safe house, the Larkspur account numbers, and the man at Corbin Genetics who altered a report for forty thousand dollars. Rusk himself is dead. They pulled him out of the cove on the Sunday, under three feet of kelp.
On Wednesday, the charges against my brother are dismissed with prejudice.
On Thursday, the Hale Meridian board votes eleven to nothing to restore me as chief executive. I thank them, remove the lilies from the table, and say I intend to resign the chair within the year in favour of Marguerite Osei, the first woman to hold it in the company's history.
And on Friday, in a small ceremony at the dockworkers' union hall in Brooklyn, with four hundred pensioners in folding chairs and a banner that says WE REMEMBER WALTER QUINN, Serena stands at a lectern and announces that the seized Larkspur assets, and the entire Lowell Ridge fund, and the Ironbridge shortfall with interest, will be paid back in full.
An old woman in a green hat gets up and kisses her.
***
The Knox County jail is a low, ugly, brown-brick building off a county road, with a flag, a parking lot, and a view of a very beautiful sea. We sign in at a desk. We surrender our phones. A guard with the face of a retired bartender escorts us down a corridor, through three steel doors, and into a small beige room with a table and four plastic chairs.
Torres is already there.
So is Brandt's lawyer, a thin young man in a pale suit who looks as though he'd prefer to be at the dentist.
And at the far end of the table, in an orange jumpsuit, with his burned hands bandaged to the wrist and a blanket over his shoulders, sits an old man.
His hair's been shorn. His chin is stubbled white. The firm, comfortable, fatherly bulk is gone, and what's left is a frail, brittle creature, with a skin like tissue paper and a pair of watery eyes.
He looks up.
"Dominic," he says.
"And Mrs Hale." He smiles. It's a small, shy, painful thing. "How good of you to come."
Serena sits.
She does it slowly, with her spine very straight and her hands folded on the table, as I've seen her sit at a hundred meetings. She looks at him across a metre of laminate. Her face is perfectly still.
"Mr Brandt," says Torres, "this interview is being recorded. You've been advised of your rights."
"I have."
"You've asked for this meeting."
"I have."
"Your lawyer's present."
"So he tells me." A faint, dry glance. "He's very anxious. I've told him not to be."
"You said you'd tell us everything."
"I did."
"On a condition."
"Yes."
"State it."
The old man takes a long breath.
"I'll confess," he says. "All of it. The money. Walter. Charles. The yacht. The boathouse. I'll write it, and sign it, and plead guilty to every count. No trial. No appeal. I'll go to prison for the rest of my life, which, I think, will not be long." He lifts his bandaged hands. "I ask only one thing."
"What?"
"That Charles Hale's name," says Augustus Brandt, "be kept out of it."
I feel it go through me, like cold water.
"I beg your pardon?" says Serena.
"His signature's on the first transfer." Brandt's voice is quite gentle. "It's in the papers. Charles never knew what he'd signed. I tricked him. It was a bridge facility, on a Friday, as a favour. He spent the rest of his life believing himself a thief." A long pause. "He wasn't. He was a good man, and a weak one, and he loved his sons. I'd like him left in peace."
"You killed him," I say.
"I did not."
"You poured the tea."
"I poured the tea," says Brandt, "because he'd asked me to."
"Digitalis." He says it simply, to the table. "He'd had a heart condition for years. It was the pills, my dear boy. He was taking too many, and he couldn't bear the pain, and he asked me, quite quietly, one evening in the study, to stop him suffering."
"That's a lie."
"Perhaps." The blue eyes lift. "You'll never know. That's the beauty of it. But you may believe what you like. I only ask that you do him the courtesy of keeping his name out of a courtroom."
"And if we don't?"
"Then I'll stand up in front of twelve people," says Brandt softly, "and say it. That the Hale Meridian Group was built on a theft. That Charles signed. That Dominic, who knew, said nothing, and was in the pay of the man who'd inherited. That he married the daughter of the man he'd helped to ruin. And that she's come back from the dead, with a hundred million dollars, to take it all."
"That's slander."
"It's a story." He smiles. "I'm very good at those."
I start to rise. Serena's hand closes on my wrist. "Sit," she says, not taking her eyes off him.
She leans forward.
She puts both hands flat on the table, a foot from his bandages. She looks at him for a long time, quite calmly, with her clear sea-glass eyes. When she speaks, her voice is gentle.
"My father's name," she says, "was destroyed by silence."
"For twelve years. A comfortable, polite silence. Everyone who loved him let it fall. They said, It's kinder. They said, Leave him in peace." Her voice doesn't shake. "And he lay in a grave, branded as a thief and a suicide, while a man in a camel coat came to his memorial and wept."
"Serena..."
"No." She lifts a finger. "No more silence. Not for Walter. Not for Charles. Not for you."
"My dear..."
"If Charles Hale was a weak man, the world can know. If Dominic knew something and was afraid, the world can know. If I'm an impostor, a fraud, a vengeful widow come back to take everything, I'll stand in front of twelve people and say so."
"You'll lose."
"Then I'll lose honestly."
"You'll lose your husband."
"Augustus." She smiles, very faintly. "You've been watching us for a month. Do you honestly think that's what's left to threaten?"
He doesn't answer.
I see the little muscle in his cheek twitch, and the corner of his mouth tighten, and something old and calculating behind the watery eyes go, slowly, very quiet.
He sits back.
"I see," he says.
"I thought you might."
"Then there'll be a trial."
"Yes."
"And I shall testify."
"I hope you do."
"You do that."
"I should warn you." His face is pale and mild. "I've never lost an argument in my life."
"Then it'll be a novelty," I say, "for both of us."
For a long moment, there's something in his eyes I can't read. It might be hatred. It might be, absurdly, respect.
"Your father said that," he says. "Walter. Never lost an argument. The day we met."
"What did you say?"
"I said, There's always a first time." Brandt's smile is very thin. "He didn't laugh."
Serena rises.
She doesn't look back.
"I'll see you in court, Augustus."
"I look forward to it."
"I'm sure you do."
In the parking lot, in the cold white sun, she stops.
She puts her hand over her mouth, and her whole body shakes, and for one wild second I think she's weeping.
She's laughing.
"Oh God," says my wife. "Dom. I think I've just committed us to a trial."
"You have."
"With you on the stand."
"Yes."
"Telling them about your father."
"Yes."
"Are you all right?"
I look out over the car roof, across the lot, to the sea.
I think of an old man's handwriting. I thought I had time. I think of a boy in a lighthouse, with a tin box, and a brother, and a whole life ahead of him.
"I'm going to tell them everything," I say.
"Everything?"
"The signature. The silence. What my father did, and what he didn't." My voice is steady. "It's the only way, isn't it? To make it stop being a weapon."
She takes my hand.
"You know," says Serena, "I think that might be the bravest thing I've ever heard."
"It's not brave."
"No?"
"It's just," I say, "that I've finally got something to say it for."