Dorian sat up slightly on the rattan daybed, his hands folded in his lap, and looked at Scott with an expression that carried the full weight of what he was about to say.
"Scott, I know I had no right to drag you into this. I know that." His voice was steady, but the effort behind it was visible. "My family's influence has been bleeding away for years. What I once had in Clearbrook County is nearly gone. If I don't do something now, before I'm gone, the people who've been circling us will move on my family the moment I'm in the ground. I can't leave them to that."
Scott sat in the chair beside the bed and said nothing for a long moment. The disappointment on his face was not the sharp kind — it was the quieter, heavier kind that comes from someone you've trusted for decades. He had come
