before it all breaks

Chapter 28

Before It All Breaks

At nine o’clock exactly, the press release went out.

Judith’s phone started ringing two minutes later. Numbers she did not recognise, one after another. She turned it face down and left it on the table.

“It is out,” Dan said, looking at his screen.

“So is ours,” Ethan said. “Elena just confirmed. Three outlets running the story simultaneously. The recording, the financial records, Whitmore’s name, all of it.”

Judith looked at both of them. “So now what.”

“Now we see which story people believe,” Ethan said.

The apartment felt different in the morning light. Smaller somehow. The notepad on the table, the cold coffee cups, the coat Ethan had never taken off. Everything from the night still sitting there like evidence of what they had been through in the last few hours.

Lily came back into the kitchen with the tablet under her arm. “Mummy the battery is low.”

“Come here.” Judith plugged the charger in without getting up and Lily settled beside her at the table, leaning against her arm, eyes already back on the screen.

Judith rested her chin on top of Lily’s head and looked at Ethan.

He was reading something on his phone. His jaw was tight.

“What,” she said quietly so Lily would not hear.

He turned the phone to show her.

It was a comment section under the press release his father’s lawyers had sent out. Already hundreds of responses. People were split. Half believing it. Half had already seen the counter story and were asking questions.

She handed the phone back.

“People are going to believe what they want to believe,” she said.

“For now,” Ethan agreed. “But facts are harder to ignore than opinions. Give it time.”

Dan came back from the hallway. “I just spoke to Robert Ashby. He is ready to give a formal statement to the police about Gerald Thompson’s accident. He is willing to go on record.”

Judith looked up.

“He will name Whitmore,” Dan continued. “And my father. Everything he told Ethan last night he is prepared to say officially.”

The room was quiet for a moment.

“Why now,” Judith said. “After six years why is he ready now.”

“Because Ethan went to see him,” Dan said simply. “Robert has been waiting for someone inside the Blackwood family to choose the right side. He needed to know it was real before he put himself in the open.”

Judith looked at Ethan.

Ethan said nothing. He just looked back at her steadily.

She turned away first.

Richard Blackwood’s car pulled up outside the building at nine twenty.

The security guard that Ethan’s men had placed at the entrance stepped forward immediately. A brief exchange happened at the door. Then another. Blackwood’s driver got out of the car and both men stood on the pavement in a conversation that did not look friendly.

Dan was watching from the window. “He is here.”

Ethan joined him. They both looked down at the street.

“He came himself,” Dan said.

“Of course he did,” Ethan said. “He is losing control of the situation and he does not trust anyone else to fix it.”

“What do we do,” Dan asked.

“Nothing,” Ethan said. “He cannot come up. Security will not let him through.”

“He will find another way.”

“Let him try.”

They watched as Blackwood got back into the car. It did not pull away. It just sat there at the curb, engine running.

Judith came to stand behind them and looked down at the street.

“He is waiting,” she said.

“Yes,” Ethan said.

“For what.”

Neither brother answered.

Then Ethan’s phone rang. He looked at the screen and his expression did not change but his shoulders tightened slightly.

“Who is it,” Dan asked.

Ethan turned the screen around.

Dad.

The three of them stood there looking at the name on the screen while it rang.

It rang six times.

Then it stopped.

A text came through immediately after.

Send Judith down. Alone. We talk and this ends today. Refuse and I promise you neither of you will have a company to run by Monday.

Dan read it over Ethan’s shoulder. “He is bluffing.”

“Maybe,” Ethan said.

“Ethan—”

“I said maybe.” He lowered the phone.

Judith had already read it. She stepped back from the window and picked up her own phone from the table.

“I am going down,” she said.

Both brothers turned around at the same time.

“No,” Ethan said.

“Judith—” Dan started.

“He wants to talk to me.” She looked at both of them. “Not you. Me. That means he is worried about me specifically. About what I know and what I have already said to those journalists this morning.” She held her phone up. “I will have this in my hand the entire time. Voice memo running from the moment I step into that lift.”

“It is not safe,” Ethan said.

“We are standing in an apartment building with your security on the door,” Judith said. “He is an old man in a car on a public street in broad daylight.” She looked at Ethan directly. “I am not afraid of him.”

Ethan looked at her for a long time.

Then he looked at Dan.

Dan looked back at him with an expression that said they both already knew they were not going to stop her.

Ethan turned back to Judith. “The moment anything feels wrong you walk back inside. You do not argue with him. You do not give him anything new. You just let him talk.”

“I know,” she said.

She pressed record on her phone, dropped it into her cardigan pocket and walked to the front door.

She paused with her hand on the handle and looked back once at Lily still sitting at the kitchen table with the tablet, completely absorbed.

Then she opened the door and walked out.