All Chapters of THE BILLIONAIRE MARRIED HIS BROTHERS' KILLER : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Both — The RoomShe spoke for forty minutes.Simon sat beside her and did not interrupt and did not look at her while she spoke — he looked at his father, watching his father's face the way he watched things that mattered, for the information that existed beneath the surface of the response. His father's face was still in the processing way. He had the full weight of his attention on Mara and he did not move it for the forty minutes she spoke.She said Adaeze's name first. She said it clearly and she said the age — twenty-two — and she said what Adaeze had wanted to be and she said what had happened and she traced it back to the Century City transaction the way you trace a river back to its source, following the water to the place it started.She said Frederick's name. She said Daniel's name. She said what they had done with the specificity of someone who had read the files until they were memorized and then lived inside the consequences of them and had not confused the two things.Sh

Mara — The Decision She Made FirstShe did not wait for morning.She had understood, sitting in the car on the drive back to the estate while Simon drove in silence and the city moved past the windows in the dark, that waiting for morning meant waiting for him to carry something that was hers to carry. He was going to sit with his father's ultimatum and he was going to think, which was what Simon did, the careful thorough thinking of a man who followed every option to its end before he chose — and he was going to arrive at something, by morning, that was shaped by the weight of what he was being asked to account for.She was not going to let him do that alone.She got out of the car at the estate. She said goodnight. She went upstairs to the residential bedroom and sat at the desk by the window and looked at the Hollywood Hills in the night and then she did the thing she had been deciding to do for the last forty minutes of the drive.She called Elder Brown.He answered on the third r

Both — The First True ThingHe told her on a Friday.Not the last day of the two weeks. The ninth day. He had been at the downtown office that morning and he had come back at four in the afternoon and she had heard his car and heard him come in and heard, by the particular quality of his footsteps on the stairs, that he had decided something.She was in the sitting room. She was always in the sitting room in the late afternoon now, the chair by the window, the book she was sometimes reading and sometimes holding. He came in and she looked up and he looked at her with the expression she had named, finally, in the direction of — the face pointed toward something — and sat in the chair across from her.They looked at each other."I've decided," he said.She waited."I'm not ending the marriage," he said. "Not for the board. Not for my father. And not because I've resolved everything — I haven't. There are things I'm still carrying that I'm not done carrying and I think you know that." He

Voss called on a Monday."We're moving faster than projected," she said. "The New York arrest gave us three new witnesses who were waiting to see if we were serious. We're serious. The grand jury is being convened in six weeks and I need your deposition before then." A pause. "In person, Mara. Downtown federal building. We need three days.""Three days," Mara said."Day one is your full account on record — everything you gave us in the initial session, formally documented with counsel present. Day two is the documents — the archive you built, the eleven operations, the corporate phase. Day three is the cross-examination simulation. My team needs to know how you hold up under hostile questioning before you go in front of the grand jury."Mara sat in the residential bedroom in the morning light and thought about what three days of formal testimony looked like. She had given the account once, in the Westwood law office, and had found the process clarifying rather than difficult — the tru

Mara — Her Father's VoiceElder Brown called her on a Wednesday afternoon to tell her he had spoken to Emmanuel Cole.She was in the east wing — she had maintained her staff role through everything, not because anyone required it but because the work was familiar and familiar things had value when the rest of your life was in reconstruction — and she stepped out to the corridor alcove and answered."I called him yesterday evening," Elder Brown said. "We spoke for forty minutes."She leaned against the wall. "How did he receive it?""Carefully," Elder Brown said. "He's a careful man, your father. He listened to everything I said and he didn't speak until I had finished and then he asked me one question."She waited."He asked me if you were alright," Elder Brown said.She closed her eyes."I told him you were," Elder Brown said. "I told him you were in a complicated situation that you were handling with more grace than the situation deserved. I told him—" A pause. "I told him that I ha