254Alex.The boardroom was colder than usual, though the sunlight cut through the windows in strips that fell across the polished table like prison bars. I stood at the head, feeling the weight of every pair of eyes in the room, every tensioned body, every assumption that they held about me, about my family, about the so-called “chaos” we’d brought to their tidy world.I laid the unsigned affidavit on the table, the paper crisp, stark against the mahogany. The typeface was formal, precise, almost bureaucratic, yet the contents were incendiary: the “strategic crash,” the directive to “neutralize an adversary,” the reference to orphans pulled into “protective orbit,” and the initials at the bottom: D.M.David’s lawyer snorted from his chair, the sound soft but audible across the room. “Inadmissible junk,” he said, with that practiced wave of disdain, as if the paper itself were absurd and beneath notice.Sophie, seated with an imperious poise, let a slow, deliberate smile curve her lip
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