Marlowe
Dorian's voice shook, but he didn't stop once he started, the whole remaining crowd watching in stunned silence as my uncle laid himself bare in front of an audience he had no obligation to answer to at all.
"I could have warned my brother the night he died," he said, each word costing him visibly. "I had information — not proof, not certainty, but enough of a warning sign that a better man would have acted on it. I stayed silent instead. Jealousy. Twelve years of watching Silas get everything I wanted, and when I had one chance to maybe save his life, some ugly part of me just — didn't."
The yard had gone completely still, the weight of the confession landing considerably differently than Reid's accusation had — not scandal, but grief, old and raw and finally spoken aloud.
"I'
