Semua Bab Four Babies and a Billion Dollar Lie: Bab 171 - Bab 180

Lies to cover upThey arrived at the hospital as the night bled into a bruised, early morning. The emergency room smelled of antiseptic and stale coffee; the fluorescent lights gave everything a pallid, unkind wash.Lady Bianca moved through the sliding doors like a storm contained in an elegant body, her shawl twisted about her shoulders, the nerves at the corners of her mouth taut as wire. Ares was a taut, silent shadow at her side, anger coiled tight in him, the kind of anger that made people stop talking and take a step back.The nurse at the reception desk had the tired, practiced calm of someone who had seen too much human drama for one lifetime. When Lady Bianca’s name flashed on the clipboard and her voice cracked through the antiseptic air—“Where is he? Tell me!”—the nurse’s placid face tried to stay neutral but the worry behind her eyes had depth. She led them down a corridor with framed certificates and tired plants toward the forensic waiting room. The fluorescent lights h

The Empty Car and the Toast of VictoryMorning came slow over the outskirts of the city, a pale wash of light that made the dew on the grass look like tiny, scattered diamonds. The police car’s sirens had long since gone, but a small knot of uniforms remained at the side of the old service road, clustered around a dark sedan with one door hanging open.The vehicle’s engine was cold; the scent of petrol and damp upholstery mixed with something less easy to name, an atmosphere of hurry and absence.Detective Mbanelea crouched by the driver’s side, his gloved fingers tapping across the dashboard like a metronome. He had the kind of face that had worn patience as a habit: neat, lined, practiced. He read the scene the way some men read a book; details gave away intent, and intent told a story.The car told him that someone had left in a hurry. There were two half empty cups in the cup holders, cheap coffee from a kiosk, an empty cigarette pack crushed under the driver’s seat, a smear of mu

Lady Bianca’s Last BreathLady Bianca had always lived as if each moment was a performance meant for the most exacting of audiences. Even in frail health, she kept the air of a woman who had never learned to ask for pity. Her shawl was shawl enough to disguise weakness in the daytime; at night, it was her armor against a world that had made her a queen of grudges.When the news of Marcus’s death reached her, it struck not only at the center of her grief but at something deeper, the idea that the life she had tried to control had unravelled in the most public of ways.Ares found her in the drawing room, propped in the old armchair that had been in the family for generations. They took it anywhere they went to. He saw her before he heard her, the way her shoulders slumped, the hollow that had opened beneath the neatness of her hair and the shawl.He moved to her side with the brisk, purposeful step of a man who had spent years learning what to do when the world demanded forward motion.

Two Months OnTwo months had a way of reshaping grief into something that looked like routine. It did not heal everything, it simply taught people how to carry new weights without collapsing. For some in the city, time had become a thin membrane stretched so tight it threatened to snap.For others, it had offered a small mercy: the moments of rawest fury and disbelief no longer rose unbidden at the sight of a familiar street or a remembered laugh. They softened into memory, and life moved forward around the missing pieces.Julian sat across from Ares in a meeting room that was more of a law office than a celebratory send off venue. The walls were a nondescript gray, the kind of neutral that made faces look tired and businesslike. Outside, spring light struck the glass and failed to warm the space; inside, the air was dense with a conversation that had been postponed and postponed until postponement no longer served anyone.“Tokyo hasn’t been entirely kind to me,” Julian said finally,

The Sister’s NameThe rainy season had left the city with a silence that smelled like wet concrete and unfinished business. The morgue lights hummed low and steady, an indifferent chorus to the grief that filled the narrow corridor. Mara stepped into that light as if into a furnace. Her breath clouded in the cold air; her hands trembled even before she saw the sheet.She had been called at dawn, an officer with a voice too formal for what he had to say. “We found a body. We need you to identify it.” He had stammered around the words, as though the truth might dissolve if spoken plainly. Mara had driven through empty streets with hands white knuckled on the steering wheel. She had thought of every possibility that could be soft, accidental, forgivable. Not this.The sheet was pulled back.The face under it was the face that had taught her how to frame a good shot: Jude’s crooked smile, the stray cowlick at his temple. Only the smile had been forced into the wrong shape by the violence