# THOMPSON-HAYES: BLOOD MONEY
## Chapter Eleven — The Press Conference
Cole's statement went live at 5:43 a.m.
Seventeen minutes before Gerald Reed's planned release time.
It was not a press release. It was a full account — posted directly to a clean, newly registered website with no connection to Thompson-Hayes or Horizon Ventures, attributed only to Cole Mercer with a date and a location: Austin, Texas, February. No agency, no publicist, no managed language. Just a man writing clearly about who he was and what he had done and why.
Mia read it in her apartment while Nathan and Cole sat at her kitchen table and the February darkness outside was just beginning to loosen at the edges. She had read the draft the night before. The final version was tighter — Cole had worked on it until th
