Chapter 30 CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 30
THIRD PERSON'S POV
The air in the D’Angelo Empire's conference room was different this time. Before, it had been a war room, preparing for a legal war. Now, it was a center of the preparation of the final nail to the coffin.
The trial was just two weeks away. The team— Ford, Reed, the others, worked with a grim, focused silence, their earlier hostility replaced by a grudging acceptance of Elysia’s command. She had earned her place at the head of the table.
Today’s agenda was witness preparation. Not for Peter. His role was now like a meaningless outer layer of an egg for the digital evidence, his credibility a problem to be managed, not a weapon to be wielded.
The new focus was on Kieran himself.
The CEO would need to testify. He was their ultimate authority on the company’s integrity, the final statement to Alexander’s narrative of corporate ruthlessness.
“He’s a terrible witness!” Martin Ford stated bluntly, sipping his coffee and shaking his head. “He’s used to giving orders, not answering them. He’s dismissive of obvious questions. A prosecutor— or Bennett’s counsel, who will act like one, will eat him alive if he shows that icy disdain on the stand.”
“He just needs to be coached!” Cynthia Reed says after Ford, but her tone lacked conviction.
Elysia, who had been quiet mostly, reviewing the deposition transcripts from Alexander’s lawyers. They had been trying to get a hold on Kieran for months. His answers were technically correct but clinically cold, devoid of any humanizing context. He was a spreadsheet with a voice.
“He doesn’t need to be charming!” Elysia finally said, closing the file in front of her and looking up at them. “He needs to be human. The jury needs to see that the legacy he’s fighting for isn’t just a stock price. It’s his father’s work. It’s the people in his company. It’s Sophia Vance.”
Ford scoffed hopelessly, shaking his head as he said. “He’ll never talk about that. He considers that, this topic is a weak point. And he will never allow himself to be weak.”
“It’s not a weakness. It’s a motive. And the jury needs a motive they can understand.” Elysia says, as she stands up. “Let’s bring him in.” She declares, and still everyone's face was hopeless.
Kieran entered into the hall a few minutes later. He has shrugged off the suit jacket, his shirt’s sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing the strong veins of his forearms.
He looked more like a military commander than a CEO. He took the seat at the opposite end of the table from Elysia, a deliberate distance.
“Alright!” Ford began, adopting a faux-friendly tone and looked at him. “Mr. D’Angelo, let’s start simple. Tell us, in your own words, what D’Angelo Empire means to you.”
Kieran looks at him without any warmth in his gaze. “It is a multinational holdings corporation with interests in logistics, technology, and sustainable materials. It employs over ten thousand people and represents a significant market share in its primary sectors.”
The silence fills the room. A textbook answer. Soulless.
“Right!” Ford said, forcing a smile and glancing at Elysia, before he asked his second question. “But what does it mean to you, personally?”
Kieran frowned slightly at his stupid question, as his eyes squinted at Ford. “I am the majority shareholder and Chief Executive Officer. Its performance is my professional responsibility.”
Elysia watched him in silence, her heart sinking so deep, that she felt that titanic was nothing. He was hiding himself off behind titles and data.
Cynthia observed the silence and tried a different trick. “Your parents founded this company, that must have created a deep sense of personal attachment to it?”
“It creates a deep sense of obligation of loyalty to their initial vision and to the employees who have helped create it.” Kieran replied, his voice even like a robot.
The silence after his robotic words fills the room in awkward and hopeless silence. Now, they start to feel like they're trying to get blood from a stone. The more they pushed for emotion, the more clinical Kieran became.
The room grew frustrated as they're getting out of options.
Elysia took a deep breath and finally spoke. “Everyone please give us a moment.”
Ford and Reed looked at her, startled by her request. “Counselor, we need to—”
“Now!” She said, her voice leaving no room for argument. “I’ll take it from here.” She adds, looking at them, then at Kieran. She wanted to get up and give a tight slap on his cheeks.
Everyone with reluctant glances, slowly walked out, leaving Elysia and Kieran alone in the vast, silent room.
Kieran leaned back in his chair, arching an eyebrow at Elysia. “Dismissing the hired help? Is this where the junior counsel attempts the ‘good cop’ routine?”
“No!” Elysia replied, standing and walking around the table. She didn’t sit near him, she went to the window and leaned against the window frame, looking at him from a few feet away. “This is where I tell you that you’re going to lose this case if you go into the courtroom like that.”
Kieran's eyes narrowed at her words as he didn't understand her reason. “My facts are sound. Your evidence is solid. Why will we lose?”
“The jury isn’t a computer, Kieran! They don’t process ‘sound facts’. They want stories, real feelings. They need to understand why you’re fighting. Not for a corporation, but for a thing, feelings, attachment.”
“I’ve told you why!” He hisses, and she can sense a flicker of impatience in his voice.
“You told me,” Elysia shot back, her own frustration breaking through after really trying to keep herself calm. “In a moment of exhaustion over tea. You haven’t told them, and you won’t. You’re hiding behind your CEO persona because you think showing them the man underneath is a vulnerability. In this room, it is. But in that courtroom, it’s your only strength.”
Kieran stood up abruptly, the chair scraping back hard as he glared at her. “I am not going to perform a grief, pity card for a group of strangers to win sympathy points.”
“I’m not asking for a performance!” Elysia hisses, taking a step toward him. “I’m asking for a moment of honesty. One moment where the jury sees Kieran D’Angelo, not the CEO. The man whose father built this with his hands. The man who visits an old Italian cook because he calls him ‘son’. The man who funded a trust for a little girl's future he had never met because it was the right thing to do.”
Elysia's voice starts to soften as she tries to put her words through his head. “And that's the man they need to see, because that’s the man Alexander is trying to destroy. If they don’t see him, and all they see is a rich, cold billionaire in a corporate war. Then they will not care who wins, is it you or Alexander.”
Kieran stared at her in silence, his chest rising and falling with a controlled breath, the cosmic blue of his eyes churned with conflict. She had stripped away the professional layers, appealing directly to the core he kept locked away all these years ago.
It was a gamble. A risky gamble.
“What do you want me to say?” Kieran finally asked, his voice low, and stripped of its icy armor.
Elysia’s lips curved into a small smile as she moved to the seat beside him, not across from him. She was no longer his lawyer coaching a witness. She was his ally, who was preparing a friend for battle.
“When they ask you what the company means to you, I want you to think about the smell of your father’s office, the ink he used. The sound of your mother’s opera on Sunday. I want you to tell them it’s the last conversation you have with them every day.” She held his gaze, giving him the emotional strength.
“And when they ask why you didn’t just take Alexander’s offer to walk away, I want you to tell them about the purple dinosaur card.” She adds, looking at him.
Kieran visibly flinched, just slightly. That was the raw nerve. The child used as a pawn in this brutal game.
“They’ll tear it apart.” He murmured in a low voice. “They will call it manipulation.”
“Let them try!” Elysia said, her voice fierce and firm. “The truth is the one thing they can’t touch. Give them the truth, Kieran. Not the corporate version. Your version.” She says and they both fall silent.
The silence stretched, thick and heavy. He looked away, out over the city he was fighting for. She saw his throat work as he swallowed. For a long minute, he said nothing.
Then, quietly, Kieran began to speak. Not in his CEO voice, but in a lower, rougher tone. “The company… It was my father’s life. He’d come home, his hands stained with machine oil from the first warehouse, and he’d tell me about the people on the floor… He knew all their names.”
He paused for a moment, gathering the memory like a physical thing. “When Bennett threatened that… it wasn’t an attack on a balance sheet. It was… a violation of a personal level.”
Elysia didn’t dare to move as she looked at him. She didn’t take notes, she just listened.
He turned his head back to her, his eyes holding a vulnerability that stole her breath as he continued. “And the girl… Sofia. No one should have their child used as a weapon. No one.” Kieran said it with a finality that spoke of a personal, deeply buried rage.
It was raw. It was real. It was perfect.
“That,” Elysia said softly, her own throat tight but her lips were curved into a soft smile. “That is what you tell them.”
Kieran held her gaze for another long moment, the cold mask vanishing completely. In its place was just the man— burdened, determined, and profoundly human. He gave a single, slow nod to her.
The rehearsal was over. The real preparation had just begun. And for the first time, Elysia saw not just a client she could win for, but a man she believed in.
The danger of that realization was like a tsunami in her calm life, only by its power.