Chapter 991
“She’s lying!” Gemma wailed from the screen. “She tampered with the tests!”
The tension in the room was brittle, ready to snap.
Then the curtains behind the stage parted.
A figure walked out. The room gasped collectively.
Lucian Graves.
He wasn’t wearing his usual sharp corporate suit. He was dressed entirely in black — a long coat that resembled a cassock, the collar high at his throat. He looked like a dark priest officiating a funeral. In his hand, he held a small black audio recorder.
“Mr. Graves?” the lawyer stammered. “We weren’t expecting —”
“The truth rarely announces itself,” Lucian said. His voice was smooth — dark chocolate laced with arsenic.
He walked past the lawyers and stood before the screen showing Gemma, looking up at her giant, tear-stained face with an expression of mild distaste.
𝗠𝘰ѕt 𝗿𝘦𝘢𝖽 th𝗂s 𝘄𝘦е𝘬 𝘰𝘯 𝗀а𝘭n𝘰𝘃𝖾𝘭ѕ.𝗰оm
“This child,” Lucian said to the cameras, “is distraught. Grief does terrible things to the mind.”
He looked out at the audience. “I visited Arthur Sterling in custody shortly before his unfortunate demise. He wished to clear his conscience.”
Skye narrowed her eyes. Lucian was maneuvering. He had likely been the one to deliver the cyanide. Now he was using Arthur’s ghost as a prop.
Lucian pressed play on the recorder.
Arthur’s voice, crackly and distorted, filled the room.
“I went too far. The money… the ambition. I dragged the girl into it. It wasn’t her fault. I just wanted… I wanted the legacy back. I regret… everything.”
The recording clicked off.
It was a masterpiece of ambiguity. Arthur admitted to dragging the girl into it — which could mean he had forced someone to impersonate Skye, or simply that he had pulled an innocent niece into a corporate war. It didn’t explicitly exonerate Gemma, but it painted her as a pawn. Crucially, however, it cleared Skye. Arthur had named his own greed as the driving force. He had named himself as the architect of the chaos.
“As you can hear,” Lucian said, “Arthur took his own life out of guilt. Ms. Skye Sterling is innocent of any foul play regarding his death.”
A murmur moved through the crowd. The murderer narrative collapsed in an instant.
“However,” Lucian continued, glancing up at the screen with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, “Gemma is a victim of circumstance. A lost soul caught in a family tragedy. She deserves our compassion, not our judgment.”
Skye clenched her jaw. He was balancing the scales with surgical precision — clearing her name to prevent a police investigation that might lead back to Ouroboros, while keeping Gemma in play as a thorn in her side.
“This briefing is over,” Lucian declared. “Gemma needs rest.”
The screen went dark.
As the press erupted in shouted questions, Lucian stepped off the stage and walked down the aisle. He stopped in front of Skye. The cameras were focused on the lawyers packing up behind him.
“Why?” Skye whispered, rising to her feet. “Why keep her in the game?”
Lucian leaned in, carrying the scent of expensive tobacco and rain.
.