The photograph on his desk was a death sentence, signed by a man of God.
Jason stared at it, the brandy in his glass long forgotten. The glossy surface reflected the pale morning light, and in it, he saw his own grim, tired face superimposed over the damning image of him paying his fixer in a dark alley.
A flicker of something cold and sharp twisted in his gut. But it wasn't fear. Fear was a luxury he had burned away in the wreckage of his last life. This was the icy, thrilling clarity of a new, more dangerous game.
He didn't panic. He analyzed.
The photograph proved that John D. Rockefeller Jr. was no longer just a pious critic, wringing his hands in the shadows. He was an active, operational threat. He was using spies. He had crossed a line in their cold war from which there was no return.
The battlefield had just shifted. The war with Morgan had been for money, for control of Wall Street. This new war, the one inside his own house, was for survival.
If that photograph, accompanied by the right narrative, reached the press—or worse, reached Rockefeller Sr.—he was finished. Ezra Prentice's charmed new life would end as surely and as brutally as Jason Underwood's had.
He knew, with absolute certainty, that he could not handle this alone. He needed his partner. His co-conspirator.
He picked up the photograph and the chilling, handwritten note. His ribs ached with a dull, persistent throb, a souvenir from his last battle. He straightened his suit jacket and walked out of the study to find his wife.
He found her in the morning room, a bright, sunlit space that always felt cold to him. She was seated in a velvet armchair, calmly reading a newspaper. The headline praised the "Morgan-led" rescue of Wall Street.
"We need to talk," he said, his voice flat.
She looked up from the paper, her eyes coolly questioning. He walked to the small table beside her and placed the photograph face down on the polished wood.
Alta raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow.
Jason flipped the photo over. He said nothing. He simply watched her face, searching for a flicker of something—familial loyalty, shock, fear. He needed to know, in this exact moment, where her ultimate allegiance lay. This was the final, brutal test of their unspoken alliance.
She looked at the picture. Her gaze was quick, analytical. She took in the dark alley, the exchange of the envelope, his own recognizable profile. Then she picked up the note and read her brother's words.
Her face, normally a mask of calm, aristocratic control, went utterly blank. It was a terrifying stillness, more expressive than any shout of anger.
She wasn't seeing a crime. She was seeing a betrayal.
Her brother, Junior, the man of God, the relentless champion of morality and honor, was using private investigators. He was using the dirty, back-alley tactics of their enemies against his own house, against her husband, against an asset of her father.
She placed the note down carefully, aligning it with the edge of the photo. When she looked up, her eyes were like chips of blue ice.
"My brother speaks of saving the family's soul," she said, her voice a low, dangerous whisper that was colder than any winter wind. "It seems he is willing to kill the family to do it."
In that moment, she chose her side. It wasn't Jason's side. It was her father's. The side of power, of control, of the family's survival above all else. And right now, he was on that side.
She stood, her movements fluid and decisive. "Come with me."
She led him back to the study and walked to a locked secretary desk, a piece of ornate furniture he'd never seen her use. She produced a small, silver key from a chain around her neck and unlocked a drawer.
She retrieved her mother's journal.
"If you are going to fight him, you cannot fight him on moral grounds," she said, placing the book on the desk. "You will lose. That is his battlefield. He has spent his entire life mastering it."
She opened the journal to a section marked with a faded blue ribbon.
"Junior has a weakness," she said. "His charity foundation. The General Education Board. It is the one thing in his life he believes is pure and untouchable. A fortress of his own piety."
Her finger, perfectly manicured and steady, tapped a page filled with her mother's elegant, spidery script.
"Every fortress," she said, her voice like steel, "has a secret entrance."
Jason leaned over the desk. The page was a list of major donors and board members for Junior's foundation. His eyes scanned the names. Most were predictable: Carnegies, Vanderbilts, men of similar stature.
But one name was circled in faint, red ink. Mr. Alistair Sterling.
Jason recognized the name instantly. He had seen it in an earlier entry in the journal, a man whose shipping empire had been secretly crushed by Standard Oil a decade ago. A man who now postured as a pious reformer and a staunch critic of monopolies.
And he was on the board of Junior's most beloved project.
Junior, in his naive belief in the goodness of men, saw Sterling as a kindred spirit, a fellow soldier in the war for a more moral form of capitalism. He was blind to the snake he had welcomed into his garden.
This was the secret entrance. This was the weak point in the wall.
Jason's mind raced, the plan forming with a cold, ruthless clarity. He straightened up, his course of action set.
He walked to the telephone. "Get me Mr. Gates," he said to the operator, using the name he had invented for the man known only as "G."
The gravelly voice answered on the first ring.
Jason's order was different this time. It felt transgressive, dangerous, like crossing a final, invisible line.
"I need to know everything about my brother-in-law's charitable foundation. The General Education Board."
He could feel Alta's eyes on him as he spoke, her silent approval a tangible presence in the room.
"The money, the people, the board members. I want to know where every dollar comes from and where every dollar goes. I want to know about Alistair Sterling. I want to know his secrets."
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. The air crackled with unspoken risk. This was not about a ruined outsider like Heinze. This was about a Rockefeller. This was an internal affair.
Gates's voice, when it came, was as calm as ever, but it carried a new weight, a new gravity.
"Investigating a member of the family, sir?" he said. "The request is... unusual."
He paused. "It will require a different level of discretion. And a different price."