I'm back at the morning the detective knocks on my door. I remember exactly how this goes: the real culprit is the one who reported me first.

By 9:45 a.m., Conference Room B had been transformed into an active crime scene repository.

The two state forensic technicians had methodically sliced the sleeves from Julian’s Loro Piana sweater, bagging the cashmere under chain-of-custody seals while Julian sat shivering in a cheap, white paper processing jumpsuit, his hands cuffed behind his back to the leg of the heavy conference table.

The door opened again.

State's Attorney Richard Vance stepped through the threshold.

Richard Vance looked like an older, sharper version of his murdered sister: high cheekbones, iron-gray hair parted with military precision, and cold, predatory eyes that had sent four consecutive Chicago aldermen to federal penitentiaries. Behind him stood two armed investigators from the Special Prosecutions Bureau, carrying heavy leather document portfolios.

Vance didn't look at Julian. He didn't look at the torn wool on the forensic tray.

He walked straight toward me, stopping two feet from where I sat drinking a fresh cup of coffee Miller had personally fetched from the sergeant's private pot.

"Mr. Hayes," Vance said, his voice deep, resonant, and clipped. "I’ve spent the last forty-five minutes reviewing the mirror archives your server delivered to my personal residence."

"I hope the metadata was satisfactory, Mr. Vance," I replied, setting the paper cup down.

"The metadata was immaculate," Vance said, his jaw tightening slightly. "Our cyber-forensics unit verified the cryptographic hashes against the Northern Trust transaction logs. The wire transfers were executed from Julian Mercer's terminal using an administrative bypass key registered to his private biometric credentials."

Vance turned his piercing gaze upon his sister's killer.

Julian didn't look up. He sat hunched on the floor, his forehead pressed against his knees, shivering in his paper suit like a drowned rat.

"My sister Victoria," Vance continued, his voice dropping an octave, carrying the terrifying weight of the state’s executive power, "was an arrogant woman, Mr. Mercer. She was demanding. She was difficult. But she was my sister. And she believed in you. She trusted you with eighty million dollars of our family’s philanthropic foundation."

"Richard... please..." Julian sobbed into his knees. "It wasn't supposed to happen... she had the chronometer... she came at me..."

"She had the chronometer because you broke into her library at one in the morning to steal the secondary audit manifests from her safe," Vance cut in, his voice slicing through Julian’s pathetic excuses like an industrial laser. "You struck her three times. Then you used an eighteen-inch length of rigging line to ensure she wouldn't testify before the grand jury."

Vance reached into his portfolio, withdrawing a red-labeled document stamped with the official seal of the Circuit Court of Cook County.

"Julian Mercer," Vance announced, his voice rolling through the conference room like thunder across the prairie. "You are formally charged with two counts of First-Degree Murder, one count of Aggravated Home Invasion, six counts of Grand Larceny, and three counts of Perjury before a Law Enforcement Agency."

Vance looked at Lieutenant Garza.

"Bail is denied by executive order. Have him transported directly to the maximum-security tier at Cook County Jail. I don't want this piece of garbage breathing the same air as the general intake population."

Miller stepped forward, his eyes bright with professional redemption. He hauled Julian to his feet by the armpits of his paper jumpsuit, spinning him toward the door.

As they crossed the threshold, Julian lifted his head for one final, desperate second.

His eyes locked onto mine.

There was no arrogance left in his face. No silver-spoon confidence. Only the bottomless, agonizing terror of a man who had finally realized that his trap had collapsed inward, crushing him beneath the weight of his own calculated malice.