All Chapters of The Ice King's Forbidden Heir: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

POV: Ava Bennett"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?""I do."The wooden chair in the witness box was colder than I expected. Judge Eleanor Whitcomb looked down at me over her glasses from a bench that seemed to float above the room, and I laid both hands on my knees so no one could see them tremble.Courtroom Four was full. I did not look at the gallery yet. I looked at the carpet, a faded blue, and counted its seams until the clerk finished reading my name aloud.When I lifted my eyes, I found three faces in the second row. Noah sat on the aisle, a cane hooked over the pew in front of him, his jaw set like a man bracing for impact. Sarah leaned against his shoulder, already dabbing at her lashes. Dylan sat beside them in a borrowed suit that strained at the arms.At the defense table, Whitfield watched me with flat gray eyes. He had lost twenty pounds. His expensive suit hung off him like a hanger. Beside him, Colette Brandt sat with her pen

POV: Ava BennettBernard Kline arrived at Janelle Park's office at eleven that night with a lawyer on each side of him, like a man being escorted to a dentist.He was sixty, soft-handed, with a gray comb-over and a silk tie that had gone damp at the knot. He did not look at me when he sat. He signed the immunity agreement with a pen that skipped twice across the paper."Mr. Kline," Janelle said. "Start with the second account.""It was never meant to be found." His voice was thin. "Mr. Sterling set it up eight years ago. He called it the Contingency Fund. It paid for things the family preferred not to appear in any ledger.""Such as?""Reviews." He swallowed. "Reporters. A private investigator named Shaw. And a loan officer at Cascade Mutual Bank named Gerald Pike."I had been staring at the grain of the conference table. My head came up."Say that name again.""Gerald Pike. He managed small business loans." Kline finally met my eyes, and then looked away as if he had touched a stove.

POV: Noah Callahan"Say that again," I said. "Slowly."Femi Okoye did not look up from the laptop. FrostTech's head of security was a broad, patient man in his fifties who spoke as if he were setting glasses down on a shelf. "The picture was not taken through a fence, Mr. Callahan. Someone made it look that way."It was six in the morning, three weeks after my surgery, and the kitchen smelled of burnt coffee and ice packs. I sat with my leg propped on a chair and a brace locked around the knee. Ava stood behind me with one hand on my shoulder. David leaned against the counter with his arms folded. The photograph from the cream envelope lay in the middle of the table, and none of us had touched it in an hour."Explain," Ava said.Okoye turned the screen toward us. "I blew it up. The chain links are flat. Every wire is equally sharp, and a real fence would blur at that distance. They were drawn on afterward." He tapped the corner. "The stamp says Saturday, 10:14 in the morning. The shad

POV: Noah Callahan"Mr. Kline never came up from the garage," said Ms. Aldana, the branch manager, leading us down a marble corridor with her heels clicking like a metronome. "Our attendant noticed his car this morning. We checked the vault log and then we called your office. I should tell you the bank's lawyers are very unhappy that I did.""Thank you," Ava said. "We'll be quick."The vault door was the size of a pickup truck, round and polished and thick as my chest. Inside, rows of small steel doors lined the walls like a honeycomb. Ms. Aldana stopped at one near the floor. Number fourteen. The door hung open an inch."It was like this when the attendant arrived," she said. "The box is empty."Okoye crouched, his flashlight already out. He ran the beam along the lock and grunted. "No force. Somebody opened it with a key.""Kline has one key," Ava said."The second is held by a co-signatory." Ms. Aldana pulled a printed sheet from her folder with the care of a woman handing over a l

POV: Noah Callahan"I do not release session records for convenience," Dr. Ingrid Sol said, and folded her hands over a leather desk blotter. "Not for police, not for lawyers, not for famous hockey players. I want that understood before we begin.""Understood," I said.It was eight in the morning. Dylan sat in the chair beside mine with his arms crossed, still wearing yesterday's hoodie. Renata sat on the sofa under the window, her face gray with sleeplessness, a signed release form in her lap.Dr. Sol was sixty or so, with a silver braid down her back and the stillness of someone who had heard every lie there was and no longer needed to flinch. She slid a thin file across the desk."Tuesday, nine o'clock. Family session. Vanessa and Renata Sterling." She tapped the page. "Vanessa arrived at 8:55. She signed in on the waiting room tablet. I have the timestamp. The session ran until 9:58. She left at ten past ten, after speaking with the receptionist about rescheduling.""Is it possibl