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"I would not be so quick to accept his embraces, were I you." Kenneth watched the two startle at the sound of his voice. Forgot about him had they?

"What do you mean?" Sara made a half-turn so she could face Irons, her hand lingering on Ian's cheek.

"There are still some questions you need to ask your paramour, and I think you will find the answers align far more closely with your original assessment of the situation than Nottingham's pre-recorded information has led you to believe." Kenneth kept his tone pleasant and even, but his eyes glittered with malice.

"I've already heard the tape, so you can forget about trying any of your manipulative bullshit. Ian didn't kill anyone last night." Pezzini shook her head in negation.

"Are you certain of that?" Irons nearly purred the question, knowing he was boxing his prey in quite neatly.

"Yeah, I'm sure." Sara tilted her chin up defiantly. She had been too quick to judge Ian last time, and she had seen how much it hurt him. She would not make that same mistake again.

"Funny then, that the Witchblade should show you a vision based on events that never happened." There was no humor in his tone.

"The Witchblade was damaged by Ceto, maybe it was just…" Sara paused and thought hard for an explanation, "Confused."

"Confused?" Kenneth raised a brow in disbelief, "Well, I suppose this is why wing'd Cupid is oft painted blind."

"Just what are you implying?" Pez glared at Irons. Why could the man never speak plain English?

"The Gauntlet is not capable of fabricating illusion; that has never been one of its gifts. It can only grant you the power to see truly, whether past or present. It pierces the Veil, nothing more and nothing less." Kenneth shook his head at such wilful ignorance.

"So what I saw was what? The Siris were shot at close range by a rouge agent, not from a rooftop with a sniper rifle."

"No, they were not, but Dante was." Irons paused to let the implications of that statement sink in. "The only reason Nottingham did not kill the Siris was because he was beaten to it. How else would he come to be in a position to have recorded that conversation?"

Pezzini looked back at Ian, green eyes pleading for a different answer than what the coldly angry blond was leading her toward. She searched his face for some sign that what Irons had just said was a lie, but saw instead that Kenneth had been correct. The brown eyes that would not meet hers were brimming over with guilt.

Sara jerked her hand away from his cheek as if she had been burned. "How could you?"

Nottingham looked past his beloved's angry face to Irons. He hoped to see some clue as to how he should progress, his heart too wounded by Sara's reaction to think beyond the fact that this must somehow be part of Kenneth's plan. It had to be. Why else would Irons expose them both to an officer of the law during a federal investigation they had been working so assiduously to avoid?

He had expected was a look of concern or support, a tilt of the head or a shift of the hand to direct him what to do next. What he had thought to see did not manifest. In its stead was a gleeful malice that rubbed salt in the open wound of Sara's rejection. Anger bloomed in answer, a violent red flower that filled the empty ache in his chest.

"Shall we not tell Sara all of it then? Shall we not tell her that you sent me to silence them? I think she should hear it all, if we are to tell tales." The words burst forth in an overt act of defiance that surprised all parties, including Dr. Immo, who hovered by the door. He seemed uncertain whether or not to enter and examine his patient or depart the scene.

"It is not your place to speak," Irons hissed, stepping into the dark-haired man's space, emphasising the height difference between them.

Ian met his eyes instead of bowing his head as had been his wont. "If this affected only me, then I would have remained silent, but a half-told tale leaves Lady Sara in dangerous ignorance. I can no longer blindly follow your lead, trusting that you will do your best by her."

An angry flush settled over Irons cheekbones in the face of Nottingham's continued defiance. After a long pause he regained control of himself. When next he spoke there was a cutting civility to his tone. "If you would have the whole of this tale told, by all means let us tell it, and tell it truly. It was you who first came to me, asking that Captains Dante and Siri be eliminated. I counselled patience, did I not?"

Kenneth paused, gratified to see Ian flinch and Sara's fists clench. So she had seen his reaction as well. Good.

"Not until Detective Orlinski came to the mansion and informed me that we should get his superiors out of the clutches of the FBI or damning information about my past would be released, did I reluctantly agree with your initial assessment."

"You gave me the order to kill them," Ian cut through the semantics.

"Yes I did. I suppose that makes their demise my fault, since you have never, ever, disobeyed an order. Right, Ian?" Kenneth stared down his nose at the younger man, knowing damn well that he had disobeyed him, or he never would have touched Sara.

This time Nottingham could not hold his gaze. Brown eyes slid away guiltily and his shoulders drooped.

"You chose to obey my order because it let you do what you wanted without being responsible for the consequences of your actions. Do not hold me up as the example of all that is evil, you have your own share of wickedness in your soul." Irons smiled as the younger man withdrew further into self-doubt and recrimination.

"Leave him alone!" Sara turned on Irons, furious at his ability to cut Ian to shreds with a few words. Mental abuse was far more insidious and difficult to deal with than physical, and it was harder to detect. Poor Ian, growing up with this kind of treatment, no wonder he was such a mess. A weaker man would have been utterly crushed.

"Why should I? You both wanted the truth; I have given it to you. It is hardly my fault if you find the knowledge a bitter pill to swallow." Irons stepped away from Nottingham; he had already been cowed back into obedience. Now he needed to focus his attention on Pezzini.

"You call that the truth? Maybe if you worked for the National Enquirer," Sara snorted.

"I am being honest," Kenneth shrugged. "It is unfortunate, at least for you, that the reality of the situation does not match that rosy little fantasy you have been concocting in your head."

"What are you talking about?" Sara took an involuntary step back as Irons moved into her space.

Kenneth followed her, lowered his head until he could breathe his poison directly into the delicate shell of her ear. "Ian is so easy to dominate, to control. What a safe relationship this must be for you. Already he hovers at the edge of your life, grateful for the scraps of affection you deign to give."

"If he's like that, don't you think you should look a little closer to home for the cause?" Sara snapped, jerking her head away from Irons.

Kenneth chuckled at her sally. "I knew you would say that."

"Well here's something else I bet you knew I'd say," Sara paused for emphasis, "You're under arrest."

"Are we back to that? Sara, Sara, Sara, I thought we had established that you had no evidence?" Irons smiled, looking down at Pezzini like an indulgent parent.

"That was before your little impromptu confession." Sara waved the black recording device at Irons, showing him that the record button had been pressed.

Kenneth felt a fleeting admiration for the detective; it could not have been easy to think objectively enough to tape their conversation, but the feeling was quickly overwhelmed by irritation at his own failure to notice what she was up to. He glared at the device, as if the heat of his anger alone would destroy it. "That is leverage only if the recording makes it into the hands of a judge."

"That's kind of the point of a trial, you know." Sara smirked, secure in her belief that she had Irons right where she wanted him.

"Ah, but I have no intention of laying my fate at the feet of a judicial system that cannot be relied upon for anything beyond blatant incompetence and miscarriages of that same justice they purport to uphold." Irons met her smirk with a sneer.

"Of course you have contempt for the system, you've been breaking laws left and right for years, but all that is about to change. I think you'll learn some respect once you're on the other side of the bars." Sara reached for the small of her back, where she had shoved her backup after finding that shooting at Nottingham was nothing but an exercise in frustration. She brought the gun up and centered the barrel on the center of Kenneth's chest.

Irons glanced down at the pistol and then up at Ian. "Disarm her, take the tape."

"No." Nottingham met icy blue eyes with new-found obstinacy. Easy to dominate was he? Begged for scraps did he? It had hurt to hear the man, who Ian had thought of as a father, speak so.

"What do you mean no?" Kenneth was further incensed by this unwelcome show of independence.

"I am disobeying you. Surely you understand? It is not, after all, the first time I have done so." Ian threw the words of his mentor and former master back in his face.

Pezzini shifted her attention to Ian, as amazed by the display of backbone as Irons had been. That distraction was all the opening Kenneth needed. He lunged forward to take the gun away himself. He hardly needed some waffling ingrate, blinded by hormones, to take care of the situation.

Nottingham saw Irons move and tried to intercept, brushing against Sara's gun arm as he did. A thunderous boom, made louder by the enclosed space, temporarily deafened all three. For a long moment, no one moved, frozen in place by the unexpected. Then Kenneth staggered back, blood staining the lower right front of his pale grey dress shirt. He bumped into the arm of the leather reading couch and collapsed onto the seat, arm reflexively going around the wound.

"Have you people lost your minds? Get out of the way if you're not going to be useful," Dr. Immo huffed as he pushed past the stunned couple, his black bag thumping Sara in the ribs as he passed.

The physician sat his bag on the back of the couch and popped it open one-handed. He pulled a pair of gauze pads out of the bag, ripped the sterile wrapping off, and pressed them to the wound. There was the faintest outhouse smell around the injury, and the slight swelling indicative of blood pooling in the abdomen.

Immo closed his eyes for a moment. He had been afraid of this. He cursed quietly to himself as abandoned the gauze pads. Pressure would do nothing for internal bleeding. Irons needed surgery, and he needed it yesterday. He turned to the desk phone and dialled the extension for his lab. "Ms. Schniekert, send a trauma team to Mr. Irons personal study and have theatre one prepped for surgery."