Chapter 21 · The Trust Inquest

The Sterling Family Trust runs forty-one pages of rules and exactly one door. Caspian is standing in front of that door with a folder under his arm, smiling like he built the building.

Navy suit. The one I picked out for him a year and a half ago in a store on Madison. He doesn't remember that. I remember everything. Occupational disease.

"You're late," he says.

"I'm exactly on time. You're early, which means you're nervous, which means I'm going to enjoy this."

He laughs, but it doesn't reach his eyes. It never does. He's thirty-six years old and he still laughs like a kid asking permission.

The inquest is on fifty-eight. Not sixty. Ruth Kessler, the trust's independent counsel, doesn't set foot on her client's floor if she can help it, and honestly, smart woman. Boardroom's the size of a tennis court. One long slab of black walnut. A court reporter with a machine that clicks every time somebody breathes too loud.

And at the far end, in the chair nobody assigned him, Marcus Sterling.

He doesn't stand when I walk in. He doesn't smile.