Chapter 17: Sixteen Steps

Keir's POV

On Monday morning I walked the length of the clinic hall.

One slow foot in front of the other, focusing on every movement.

I had a walker with a rail on each side, a belt around my waist that a therapist held, and a nurse behind me with the chair.

My left leg moved when I told it to.

My right thigh shivered when I yelled at it, and the knee stayed locked.

Lena stood at the end of the hall in her white coat with her arms folded.

She wasn't smiling.

She was counting with me, silently, with her lips.

At sixteen I reached her, and I put my hands on the wall on either side of her head to stay upright.

"You're getting heavy," she said.

"I'm getting tall."

"That too."

She kissed me fast, in front of the therapist, who looked at the ceiling.

Then my man appeared at the other end of the hall, and I saw his face.

"Sir," he said. "It's the Ashgrove dining room. You need to hear it."

We listened in my study with the door locked.

Lena sat on the edge of the desk with one earbud, and I took the other.

The audio began with the clink of china and a chair scraping.

Adelaide's voice came through clear and tired.

"She says the treasurer's wife sent the glass to a laboratory."

"That's what she told us," Roxie said. "At dinner, with Peg looking at me."

"Then she's bluffing, or she is not." There was a cough, wet and long. "Either way, we do the second packet at the Donnellys' table."

Lena's hand clamped on my knee.

"And Keir?" Roxie asked.

"My informant says the boy bends the right knee already. He may stand by the gala."

I stopped the recording.

"What?" Lena said.

"That is a lie."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Bloodline of Retribution: The Disowned Prodigy from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.