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I don’t know what to say to that.

Alester closes the folder, finally, but he keeps one hand resting on top of it. “My father defended him too, in his way. Not that Dalton required it. He rarely does.”

There is the smallest edge there. So small I might have missed it if I hadn’t been listening for exactly that.

“He respected him,” I say.

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t like that.”

Alester’s eyes return to mine. For one second, I think I’ve gone too far.

Maybe I have.

But he only says, “I was his son.”

The words are quiet. No self-pity. No visible anger. Nothing messy enough to make him human in an easy way.

Just that. I was his son.

And somehow it tells me more than anything else he has said.

I sit there with my hands around the glass, feeling the cold of it against my palms. “You brought him into this anyway,” I say.

“I trust his judgment.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No,” he says. “It isn’t.”

He doesn’t elaborate. Of course he doesn’t.

But now I understand a little more.

Alester chose Dalton because Dalton is good, because Dalton is trusted, because Dalton is the kind of man people believe when things become frightening. But he dislikes him, or at least, he feels the kind of dislike someone like Alester is capable of.

Alester sends me home ten minutes later.

Not abruptly. Nothing about Alester is abrupt. He closes the folder, confirms Petra will send the updated appointment list, asks whether I need the car to stop anywhere on the way back, and says it all in the same even voice he used to tell me his father trusted Dalton more than he trusted most of his own family.

By the time I get into the back seat, my head feels crowded. The nausea is still there, but it has settled into something dull and manageable. I lean against the window while the car pulls away from the curb and try not to replay the conversation too many times.

I fail immediately.

I was his son.

Alester said it without drama. That made it worse. If he had sounded angry, I could have filed it under rich family resentment and moved on. But he had sounded almost factual, like he was identifying the place where something had gone wrong and refusing to ask anyone to feel bad for him.

My phone buzzes in my hand before I can decide whether I’m allowed to feel bad for him anyway.

Dalton: Are you home?

I stare at the message for a second, then look out the window at the traffic.

Me: In the car. Being transported like a mildly nauseous diplomat.

The reply comes almost at once.