The Room at the Top of the Stairs

Emeric didn't sleep. He sat with the audit flag glowing on his screen and let the house pull him backward, the way it always did when he was afraid.

He was eight the first time he lied for Percy.

Gideon Ravenscroft's study had a window with old, thick glass, the kind that bent light strangely. Percy had thrown a cricket ball through it, showing off, and when the glass shattered Percy had gone white and silent, the way he always did right before someone else took the blame.

"I did it," Emeric had said, before Gideon even asked.

He remembered his mother's face in the doorway. Odalys Marchetti didn't argue. She'd worked for the Ravenscrofts for eleven years by then; she knew which words cost a job and which didn't.

Gideon had looked at Emeric for a long moment. Not angry. Measuring.

"Go to your room," he'd said. Just that.

Emeric remembered the stairs. He remembered the door closing. He didn't let himself remember much past that — some doors, once shut, stayed shut on purpose.

What he remembered clearly was Percy, at the bottom of the stairs, watching him go up. Not stopping it. Not saying anything at all.

Twenty years later, Emeric was still the one going up the stairs.

His phone buzzed. Thea.

*You awake?*

*Always,* he typed back.

*Check the shareholder portal. Someone posted the Q3 numbers next to Percy's press statement. Side by side.*

Emeric's stomach dropped before he even opened the link.

*Who posted it?*

*Doesn't say. But it's already got four hundred comments.*

He clicked through, and there it was — the real numbers, the real collapse, right next to Percy's beaming photo and his promise of an alliance that didn't exist.

Someone besides the auditor knew.

And this time, they weren't keeping it quiet.