Chapter9

Dawn crept over Mayfair House like a thief, its pale fingers gilding the frost-laced lawns where Lucian Sinclair's wheelchair carved fragile trails through the rime. The conservatory's glass panels, still etched with Malcolm's decade-old fingerprints from a drunken midnight waltz, reflected the earl's gaunt profile. His breath fogged a phantom kiss over the ghostly imprint as Finn Fitzgerald's footsteps echoed in the marble hall.

The boy paused at the threshold, his Saint Michael's blazer hanging askew over a jumper frayed at the elbows. Lucian didn't turn. "You'll miss first bell."

Finn's grip tightened on his satchel—a relic from his Fitzgerald days, its leather scarred by Camden alley scrapes. "I wanted to…"

The earl rotated his chair, dawn light sharpening his features into a marble frieze. "To indulge this morbid fascination?" His gloved hand rose, tracing the air an inch from Finn's brow. "Your brother's eyebrows arched higher. Less…predatory."

The boy stood statue-still as Lucian's fingers sketched invisible lines. Somewhere in the east wing, Pembroke's silver tray clattered against tiles, shattering the moment.

"Go," Lucian withdrew into shadow, "before your Latin tutor invoices me for tardiness."

Harrow's gates loomed ahead, their wrought-iron spikes crusted with overnight ice. Finn pedaled past the idling Daimler, its smoked windows hiding photographers hungry for fallen-aristocrat shots. Groundskeeper jeers followed him to East Quadrangle's peeling doors—"Oi Fitzgerald! Does the cripple tuck you in?"

The chemistry lab reeked of sulfur and teenage desperation. Finn's salvaged textbooks lay open to Malcolm's marginalia—Reaction 23: 2% yield. Neurological effects match Subject 4's convulsions. A shadow blotted the grime-streaked window light.

"Playing alchemist?"

Allister Beaumont's Gucci loafers crushed a petri dish. The stolen Sinclair signet ring gleamed on his pinkie. "Heard you're the earl's new lapdog."

Finn's satchel hit the floor with a metallic clank. "Heard you're still laundering daddy's casino debts."

The fight lasted 2.3 minutes—Finn timed it by the chapel bells. When Beaumont lay whimpering in a puddle of spilled nitric acid, the boy crouched to retrieve his prize.

"Tell your father," Finn polished the ring on Beaumont's Turnbull & Asser shirt, "Sinclair Holdings is auditing his Cayman accounts."

Fitzgerald Manor's ruins exhaled decay into the brittle air. Lucian watched forensic technicians pick through the skeleton of Malcolm's childhood bedroom, their UV lights exposing fungal constellations on water-stained walls.

"Anything?"

The lead tech held up a carbonized notebook. "Partial entries near the spine."

Malcolm's looping script peeked through ash—Meeting H. at Royal Docks. Payment delayed. Lucian's pulse thrummed against his glove seams. "Overnight it to Zurich. Full spectral reconstruction."

Pembroke materialized with a thermos. "Headmaster Vaughn called regarding Master Finn's…enthusiasm."

The earl's smile ghosted across twin surveillance feeds—Finn standing over Beaumont's twitching form, security cameras dutifully recording every angle. "Increase his allowance. And fetch my contacts at The Telegraph."

Dr. Laurent's clinic hummed with the menace of unmarked vans. Lucian stared at the neural scan glowing above the autopsy table—his cerebellum now a tumorous galaxy.

"Three months," the neurologist adjusted his half-moon spectacles, "with the Swiss cocktail."

Lucian injected emerald liquid into his radial vein. "Will it hold for the trial?"

Laurent's silence answered.

Pharmaceutical reps whispered in Mandarin by the elevators. Let them come. Let the world see what became of monsters who danced with fire.

The teddy bear waited on Finn's four-poster bed, its remaining eye replaced with a micro-camera lens. Pembroke's note fluttered down—His lordship advises discretion.

Finn's laughter startled the Samoyed dozing by the hearth. He tucked the bear between stolen beakers from Lucian's lab. Let the earl watch. Let him see the monster he'd sculpted from grief and vengeance.

The Old Bailey's vaulted ceiling swallowed whispers whole. Finn gripped the public gallery's brass rail as Lucian's wheelchair glided into the dock, Savile Row armor deflecting the prosecutor's glare.

"Let the record show," the barrister's voice dripped Westminster honey, "Lord Sinclair's factories produced the defective brake lines in the Fitzgerald tragedy."

A juror's pearl necklace snapped. Finn's nails carved crescents into the bear's camera eye.

Lucian raised a single finger. "My Lord, Exhibit 12."

Screens erupted with CCTV footage—not the earl's Daimler, but a black Range Rover with Parliamentary plates. The Prime Minister's aide sweating through his Etonian drawl—The order came from—

Gunfire. Screams. Digital snow.

Finn's vision tunneled. The hybrid monster howled.

Dusk bled through the Sinclair crypt's stained glass, painting generations of marble effigies in bloodlight. Lucian's wheelchair left skid marks on ancestral bones.

"You used me." Finn's accusation echoed off sarcophagi.

"I honed you." The earl produced a velvet box—Malcolm's sapphire engagement ring beside a mercury-filled bullet. "War is alchemy. Grief into gunpowder."

"Even with family?"

"Especially with family." Lucian's chuckle rattled death's door.

Beyond the crypt, police sirens wove through Mayfair's maze. Finn pocketed the bullet. The ring he left gleaming on Malcolm's urn—a farewell and a vow.

The Times headline screamed at dawn—SINCLAIR ACQUITTED! CABINET SECRETARY ARRESTED IN COVER-UP!

In the rehabilitation suite's chemical gloom, Lucian watched Finn pack. The boy's Harrow tie hung like a hangman's noose over a duffel stuffed with stolen research.

"Where now?"

"Somewhere your cameras can't follow." Finn zipped the teddy bear between neurotoxin vials.

The earl's wheelchair blocked the door. "You'll need this." He tossed his signet ring. "Accounts reactivate at midnight."

Finn caught it midair. "Bribery, Lord Sinclair?"

"Education." The earl's morphine-slurred smile cut glass. "Revolutions require capital."

As the boy vanished into London's carcinogenic dawn, Pembroke entered with the morning post. A Polaroid fluttered down—Finn at Heathrow's Gate 13, the bear's camera eye peeking from his coat.

Scrawled in methylene blue on the back—Omnia Mutantur.

Lucian fed the photo to the hearth. Somewhere over the Channel, a chartered Learjet pierced storm clouds, its hold heavy with poisons and the sweet rot of old roses.