The dial tone flatlines. In the sterile, ten-floor hush of the clinic, the silence following Cormac’s wet, wheezing laughter feels like an eviction notice. Siobhan lowers the handset, thumb hovering over the dark screen. She said what the boys wouldn't: the empire is bleeding out, and it needs a tourniquet, not a crown.
Declan paces the linoleum, the armpits of his Savile Row shirt mapped with dark salt-stains. He looks like a man who has calculated the buoyancy of a lead lifeboat. Brigid remains motionless by the glass, her profile a scalpel against the Dublin rain, probably already auditing the Foundation's discretionary accounts to see which directors are cheap enough to buy tonight. Only Tomás stays at the bedside, his charcoal pencil scratching rhythmically as he sketches their father’s slack-jawed, predatory recovery. Siobhan feels the cold itch of her own competence. She knows where the bodies are buried because she bought the shovels. Let them scramble. Cormac never wanted an answer; he wanted a confession of appetite. Siobhan just handed him the sheet music.
She turns for the elevators, needing air. Near the nurse's desk, a shadow detaches from the mahogany paneling. Silas Thorne, the family’s ancient legal gargoyle, clutches a leather valise to his ribs. He is twelve hours early.
He eyes the heavy, double-locked doors of the private files room.
