Chapter 10: What Rowan Paid

Felix told him in the lift, because he had run out of ways not to.

"Lantern Capital is mine."

Casper stared at the numbers climbing past the glass.

"The stamp on the invoice," he said slowly. "The F.R. is you."

"Felix Ride. I started it at seventeen with money my mother left me.

"Every loan Rowan ever got, every lease, every investor who picked up the phone for him, came from me."

"He doesn't know."

"He thinks his own cleverness did it."

They went into the penthouse, and Felix opened the laptop on the glass table and pulled up the Lantern ledger.

His hands were not entirely steady.

"Last spring Rowan asked me to approve a monthly line, marked family care.

"He said it was for an old friend of his father's who had been hurt. I didn't ask for the name, and I didn't read the invoices. I signed."

He turned the screen.

The payee was the Ainsley Ward.

The first entry was dated the week of the accident.

Casper sat on the arm of the sofa and read it twice.

"Eight months," he said. "Eight months of payments. Every one of them yours."

"Rowan never paid a cent."

"He said he did. He said it every week. He said if I didn't go through with the wedding he'd stop."

"He couldn't have stopped. It wasn't his to stop."

Casper laughed.

It was a terrible sound, high and cracked.

"So I stood up there," he said. "I said your vows in a whisper and I let you be laughed at.

"The whole time my mother was being kept alive on your money. He bought me with it. He bought me with you."

"Casper."

"I've been living on you since the first day." His voice shook.

"I thought you were the one I'd wronged. And you were the one who'd been..."

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