He asked. It was something I added to the final round. She said they were already softened by the NDA split. The audit was the thing I'd been holding back. A pause.
The results of that audit are going to be available to the AG's office, to every plaintiff's attorney in the state, and to journalists like Sarah Chen. So, the NDA doesn't matter, Ethan said slowly, because the audit makes the practice visible anyway. Correct. Campo said the two plaintiffs who signed ND a about their specific cases are protected but the pattern the systematic fraud across the portfolio that goes on record through the audit. Apex's legal team either didn't understand that implication or decided the audit was preferable to the Thursday hearing.
I think it was the latter. Ethan thought about Sarah Chen's peace and the 1200 shares by dinner and the 67 emails and the silver car that had come slowly down his drive and reversed back out. Darla he said yes that was extraordinary. He said a brief silence. It was a team effort.
She said in the way she said it was different from deflection. It was acknowledgement. She meant Reyes and the nine plaintiffs and the Hell's Angles members who documented the roof violations to support the case. And Ethan understood herself. We'll have signing documents by end of week.
The audit firm starts Monday. She paused. And Ethan, you should know that Reyes contacted the AG's office this morning, not about the settlement, but about the audit requirement. They're watching. After he hung up, Decker was looking at him.
It's over, Decker said. This part is, Ethan said. He called Jackson. When Jackson answered, Ethan said, "It's settled. Full reimbursement, public audit, no NDA for seven of nine plaintiffs."
Jackson said nothing for a long moment. The audit, Jackson said. Campos added it at the end. Ethan said it puts everything in the public record without the individual cases being exposed. She's good, Jackson said.
She's excellent, Ethan said. Another pause. How do you feel? Ethan thought about it honestly. He thought about the specific architecture of the feeling.
The relief which was real but smaller than he'd expected and the other thing underneath it. The thing that didn't have a clean name, the feeling of something having been completed that was larger than the parts he could identify. I feel like something Margaret would have called rightess. He said that specific thing where you're not sure how you knew what the right thing was, but you know you did it. Jackson was quiet for long enough that Ethan checked the call hadn't dropped.
I want to tell you something, Jackson said. Go ahead. I've had a lot of people in my life over 40 years. Jackson said, "A lot of situations, a lot of moments where I had to make a judgment call about what kind of person I was dealing with." He stopped.
"When I drove to your house to pick up that wallet, I thought I was doing the efficient thing, just handling it myself instead of sending someone." another pause. I didn't expect to meet you. I didn't expect to meet you either, Ethan said. What I mean is. Jackson paused again and Ethan recognized the quality of the pause now.
The one where Jackson Morgan, who commanded a room by nature and spoke with the authority of decades, was navigating something that was more vulnerable than he was entirely comfortable with. After Lily died, I closed off. I didn't I stopped letting things matter the way they used to. I kept the club running. I kept the obligations.
I kept moving. But I stopped letting anything get through. He stopped. That photograph in the wallet, the fact that you saw it and you protected it and you called me, that started something moving again that I didn't know was still capable of moving. Ethan sat at his kitchen table in the silence that followed.
He thought about the photograph of Lily with her head thrown back in that unguarded laugh. He thought about the morning light on the highway shoulder. He thought about 30 seconds. She'd be proud of you, Ethan said quietly. Not for the club or the reputation.
For the way you moved when it mattered. The silence on the line lasted a long time. When Jackson spoke again, his voice was the same flat controlled register. It always was, but something underneath it was different, looser, like something had been set down. Friday night, he said, "My place.
I want to introduce you to some people. The people who've been part of this, the hell's angles. Ethan said, "My family," Jackson said. "There's a difference." Ethan thought about that, about all the things he'd assumed about leather jackets and motorcycle clubs and the men who moved in Jackson Morgan's orbit before he'd stood in that orbit himself and seen what it actually looked like from the inside.
"All right," he said. "Friday." He ended the call and sat at the table. Decker had cleaned up the food containers without being asked and was leaning against the counter with his own coffee, looking at something on his phone with the comfortable, settled quality of a man who was exactly where he was supposed to be. "You got somewhere to be?"
Ethan asked. Decker looked up. "Not particularly." "Then stay a while," Ethan said. Decker stayed another 2 hours.
They talked about engines. Ethan's 40 years of diagnostics and Decker's own working knowledge, which was more extensive than Ethan had expected, the kind of practical depth that came from maintaining a fleet of motorcycles across 40 years of hard riding in Arizona weather. They found in the language of mechanical systems a version of each other they recognized easily. Men who understood that things worked because of careful attention to the relationship between their parts and that things failed for the same reason. After Decker left, Ethan called Reyes.
Reyes had already heard from Campus. He was restrained the way he was always restrained, but something was moving underneath it. The audit, Reyes said. I know, Ethan said. When the results come in, and this is going to take some months, but when they come in, if the pattern holds across the full portfolio the way we think it does, he stopped.
This doesn't end with nine properties, Ethan. This ends with regulatory action at the state level at minimum. I know, Ethan said again. Does that Rehea started? Yes, Ethan said before he could finish the question.