CHAPTER 285: COURT.

The weight of it all settled in my gut, a leaden mass of realization and fury. Sophia, gone because of a childish, twisted act of sabotage. Isabella, nearly destroyed by a calculated smear campaign orchestrated by Caden and enabled by Clara. And I, oblivious, a pawn in a game I hadn’t even known was being played.

I sat back slowly, my pulse a dull, steady drum in my ears. My thumb traced the edge of the armrest, leather groaning under the pressure.

"Where the fuck is Clara?"

My voice came out quiet — too quiet for the violence burning through my chest.

Gray straightened, his posture shifting almost imperceptibly. "Sir..."

"Because the last time I saw her," I continued, voice calm but edged with steel, "she was in custody. I made sure she’d stay that way. So tell me — how the hell did she and Caden get back in contact?"

Gray’s spine straightened. "After the investigation, we apprehended her immediately, sir. She’s been secured in the same warehouse facility as Caden and Henry Walton. Different cell block."

I turned toward him slowly. "You arrested her quietly."

"Yes, sir. We confirmed she and Caden had been in contact since her transfer from Euvaropen. He rescued her back then, after that gala incident—used one of his father’s old shipping routes. They worked together on the leak, the abduction, everything. When the operation collapsed, we tracked them both. Your orders were to contain the primary targets alive, so we brought them in."

Silence.

I studied him. Gray wasn’t the type to miss steps, and I hadn’t commanded hesitation.

Gray did’t do half-jobs. Not unless I order it.

He must have read the thought in my expression, because he inclined his head slightly. "she is under maximum watch, sir. No outside contact. No devices. Nothing."

Good.

I turned slightly toward him. "You didn’t think to inform me before now?"

He hesitated. "You were still recovering. We didn’t want to bring you updates until your condition stabilized."

For a moment, I said nothing. Then I exhaled, long and quiet. "Noted."

I shifted my attention to Cameron. "You said you had something for me."

He slid a sealed envelope across the desk. "DNA results. From the samples you ordered."

I flipped it open, eyes scanning the crisp printout, the signatures. Cameron spoke as I scanned it.

"Caden isn’t a Walton," he said. "Not a ounce of blood ties him to the line. His DNA matches Yvonne’s first husband. Yvonne had fabricated the result."

My fingers drummed once against the file before closing it. "So the empire’s bastard prince isn’t blood after all."

"Not even a drop," Cameron said.

I nodded once, a small, unreadable sound caught in my throat.

"Then it ends the way it should have long ago."

Gray’s voice broke through the silence. "What’s the next move, boss?"

I answered without hesitation.

"Court."

****

The courtroom was colder than I expected.

Not physically—no.

The cold here was a different kind of temperature.

The kind that lived beneath skin and bone.

The kind drawn from eyes that had come to watch monsters fall.

When I entered, the entire room turned. Heads swiveled in unison, a wave of hushed whispers rippling through the galleries, then dying into an expectant silence. Every eye in that hallowed hall fixed on me, the man who had brought the Walton Empire’s dirty laundry to the steps of justice.

I walked with a measured pace, my expression carefully neutral. No arrogance, no theatrics. Just a man intent on seeing a debt paid. The air was thick with the scent of old paper, polished wood, and the faint, metallic tang of dread. Cameras like hungry insects pinned around the room.

But none of that mattered.

Clara,

Caden,

Henry Walton—

All sat in their respective boxes, cuffed, guarded, and stripped of the illusion of power.

And I sat in the front row, hands folded, jaw locked, pulse so quiet it felt mechanical.

Not anger.

Not yet.

Precision.

The room quieted—not because of the bailiff’s call, but because the empire had just taken its seat.

Let the world see what happens when you try to cross me.

"Court is now in session," the bailiff announced. "The Honorable Judge Marlowe presiding."

Judge Marlowe is a friend I had made when I was in college.

He was known across the continent as the hammer.

He didn’t tolerate theatrics, bias, or corruption.

Which was why I chose him.

There would be no mercy here.

Not today.

Not for them.

He adjusted his glasses, looked at the defendants, and exhaled like he’d swallowed something rotten.

"We are here to hear the case of Clara Langford, Henry Walton, and... Caden Walton—" he paused, eyes narrowing at the file, "—or rather, the man formerly claiming to be Caden Walton."

A murmur swept through the benches.

Good.

Let the humiliation begin early.

The judge read through the charges—pages, paragraphs, entire histories of corruption and cruelty unspooled into the air. Every sentence felt like a scalpel peeling back the truth layer by layer.

Clara flinched when Sophia’s case was reopened.

The screen behind Rivers came alive.

A kitchen: sunlight, the steam of sauce, and my mother moving with that careless certainty she had before the fractures. A younger me at the island, hands winding ribbon around a wicker basket — ridiculous, useless perfection. The smell of fried chicken rose off the screen like an accusation. There was Sophia, a laughing girl not yet taught the world’s cruelty. Clara was there too, hair scraped back with a ribbon, polite, smiling into the camera as if nothing could ever sour.

Gray’s hand moved the clip forward on my command. The motion blurred, then froze on Clara’s small hand reaching behind the cook’s elbow. Not the jar within easy reach, but another, hidden, a different label. A smear of nut butter. Three seconds. The room filled with a sound I’d forgotten how to make: a quiet that was at once metallic and living.

"She handled the spread," Rivers said. "She placed that sandwich among the others. Later, we matched a popsicle wrapper from the Gates villa to a batch containing nuts and chocolate, the allergens that caused Sophia gate’s fatal reaction."

The judge’s gaze, already fixed on Clara, now bore into her. Her carefully constructed poise fractured. Her lips parted, a silent gasp escaping before she could control it. Her eyes darted to the screen, then to me, a wild, cornered look that was far more telling than any confession.