Silence thinned the room. Julian smiled like a man being given an attractive, if risky, way to keep his reputation intact while doing a little public penance. Orla frowned, thinking through the play. Dad exhaled hard, the sound like relief or surrender—I couldn’t tell.
Julian tapped his fingers together, counting out risks with a bored elegance. “Complicated,” he said. “Expensive. Messy. But it might work. My partners will prefer a plan that stabilizes the market rather than blows it up entirely. If Orla will accept this framework, we fund the house and seed the business, and we allow for a staged, public audit and the naming of certain buyers as evidence permits.”
Orla’s eyes glittered. “I want that,” she said. “And I want a clause: should the audit reveal deeper culpability, the settle
