You have ten minutes to decide.” It was not vengeance, though it would have been easy to call it that.

It was a door held open, a mercy extended to the very people who had tried to end his life, a chance to walk away lawfully rather than in handcuffs.

Victoria rounded on her brother, her composure shattering.

“You idiot,” she hissed.

“You actually tried to poison him?” “Shut up, Victoria,” Julian snarled.

But there was nothing left to argue.

Within six minutes, both of them had signed the waivers that Arthur’s legal team laid before them, their hands shaking with fury and terror, and then they fled the suite without once looking back, and I never, in all the years that followed, had to stand in the same room with either of them again.