# THOMPSON-HAYES: BLOOD MONEY
## Chapter Thirty-Two — Cole and Gerald
Cole requested the meeting through his attorney.
Not as part of the federal process — separate from it, voluntary, arranged through the correct channels so that it was documented and witnessed and Gerald Reed's own legal team could not later claim it had not happened. The federal attorneys signed off. Gerald Reed's defense team agreed after forty-eight hours of deliberation that Mia suspected was less about legal strategy and more about a man deciding whether he was capable of being in a room with the consequence of his choices.
He agreed.
Cole told Mia the night before.
They were in her apartment — all four of them had been in the apartment that evening, the rhythm of people who had been in a sustained emergency t
