Realization

Ares watched the footage as if it might rewrite the years he had lived without knowing the truth. The laptop screen before him gleamed in the dim light of his study; on it, the masquerade clip hammered through his speakers with the same clumsy audacity that had seized the city when Jude’s files first leaked.

The broadcast had spread like wildfire, raw, uncut, and merciless and Ares had not been able to avoid it. Not when half the networks were replaying the scene and social ...