Chapter 228

My father takes the news about Carver’s condition with a stillness that scares me considerably more than shouting would have.

He doesn’t slam his hand on the desk. He doesn’t raise his voice, doesn’t demand anyone repeat themselves, doesn’t do any of the things I’ve watched him do when a business deal falls through or a rival tries something petty. He just sits there for a long moment, absorbing it, his eyes going somewhere distant like he’s already three moves ahead in a chess game the rest of us haven’t even realized we’re playing.

“A machine keeping him alive, you said,” he says finally, mostly to himself.

“He’s in a coma,” Eli confirms. “Apparently, the bullet grazed his brain not bad enough to kill him but bad enough to out him on life support. There’s no version of that man giving orders from a hospital bed, not for weeks, maybe longer.”

“Then someone else has been,” my father says. “Which means everything we’ve been calling Carver’s operation for th