Thanks for all the support and reviews :) Sorry this took so long to get up :O I had to really sit down and plan this fic out to make sure the entire thing made sense. Updates should come faster now!

As a heads up - this chapter establishes the background of the murder and may contain sensitive material.

But ENJOY :)

Nico rolled over and groaned. He blearily rubbed the sleep from his eyes and shot up in bed. Shit! It was 6 am, he was going to be late for his meeting with Will. As Nico threw on a shirt and hurriedly brushed his teeth while putting on the coffee maker, he couldn't help but wonder who in their right mind would schedule a meeting this early in the morning.

Yawning, Nico stumbled through the lobby and took the elevator to Will's apartment. When a smiling Will opened the door for him, dressed in casual grey dress pants and a nearly blinding yellow shirt, hair and face in perky, handsome perfection, Nico became acutely aware of his own hastily thrown together outfit and messy bed-head.

"Good morning," chirped Will, placing a hand on Nico's back as he led him to the kitchen table. "Breakfast?"

Nico blinked. This was highly unprofessional, but his traitorous stomach growled at the savoury smell of omelettes frying on the kitchen. Will nodded, his soft lips curling up in a knowing smile as he turned to the stove and flipped the omelettes over. "So what's on the schedule today Mr. di Angelo?"

Nico pulled out his folder of notes that he had made the night before. "Ah well, we're going to…uhm…start with the evidence Detective Piper found when she…ah…she investigated Darcy's death." He cursed himself for stuttering like a common schoolboy. Nico was the best paralegal in the business damn it!

Will slid a plate in front of him, the intoxicating smell of freshly cooked cheese and vegetables wafting tantalizingly in front of him. Nico licked his lips in anticipation. Since his half sister, Hazel, had moved in with her fiancé, Frank; Nico barely got nice homemade food anymore. Nico couldn't cook to save his life, a fact that had Annabeth and Jason highly disappointed in him when they first hung out at his apartment.

"You're Italian, and you can't even make me authentic Italian food?" Jason chided, digging through Nico's fridge. Although the blonde boy held such a prestigious position at Jupiter Law Firm, he was still only a few years older than Nico, a huge factor in their closeness. Jason had become a sort of older brother figure to Nico during his first few months at the law firm and they continued to stay good friends.

Annabeth yawned as she flicked through Nico's small movie collection. The beautiful woman had finally elevated Nico to "friend" status as well and had a bad habit of showing up at his apartment whenever she felt like it. "Come on Nico, one of us has to be able to cook. I'm too busy with cases and Jason is useless. I was expecting you to be the sole victualing member of this group."

Jason responded by throwing a packet of moulding cheese towards Annabeth, which she deftly caught and returned with a deadly accuracy, smacking Jason on the side of the head. Nico grinned and leaned back against the counter. It had taken him all of his college degree, but he'd finally found somewhere he belonged.

Nico thought that Will would make a good addition to their motley group, one which had swelled to include Reyna (on occasion, when she wasn't too busy running the entire law firm), Frank and Hazel, and Jason's love interest – aka the girl he was too scared to ask out – Piper, a renowned detective with the Manhattan Police Force. Shaking his head slightly, Nico chastised himself. Will was a client, and a potential killer at that, but Nico did have a tendency of falling for guys he shouldn't fall for.

"So Will, we're going to start with your alibi for the murder."

Annabeth stepped through the doorway, wrinkling her nose at the papers haphazardly spread across the desk. "Piper, could it kill you to be a bit neater?"

The Cheoreke girl spun around in her chair and grinned, multi-coloured eyes sparkling. "I work better like this and besides, you know you like a spontaneity."

Annabeth sighed and eyed the photos Piper had strung up on her wall, the cluttered corkboard with pins and red circles scattered across the notes like stars in the night sky. Someone might think it urbanely beautiful until they noticed the morbid content of the images. "Is that really necessary?" Annabeth said, pointing at a particularly gruesome image of a man's bloody body.

Piper glanced over, "Oh yeah, already solved that one." She tore the picture down and tossed it in the waste paper basket. "Hardly worth my time. I always hate the drug-deal-gone-wrong cases."

Sitting delicately down on the chair across from Piper's desk, Annabeth pulled out her file and placed it gently on top Piper's mess. "So the Fallons case. I read over it, but there only seems to be speculative evidence."

Piper nodded, pushing her choppy brown hair away from her face. "From the autopsy, it seemed that Darcy was killed by a heroine overdose. Although practically everyone has the knowledge and resources to kill Darcy this way, so it didn't really give anymore information."

Nico flipped through a few of his notes, "The biggest issue is that you don't have an alibi during the time of murder, and you know where all the cameras in the hospital are, so you could have conveniently pulled the batteries from the one in Darcy's room."

Will nodded, "But the cameras don't even show me entering the hospital in the middle of the night. I don't see how I could have done it."

Piper pointed to a grainy image suspended on her wall. "We see a tall hooded man leaving the hospital here. He's much bulkier than Dr. Solace, but he could have easily stuffed the hoodie."

Pursing her lips, Annabeth jotted down a few notes, "And let me guess, Dr. Solace has enough knowledge of the layout of the hospital to avoid the hallway cameras."

Piper grunted in assent as she moved her notes around. "His apartment complex records him leaving the apartment at 12 am and coming back home at 2 am. Which coincides with the approximate murder time of 1 am."

Will scowled. "Everyone knows I go jogging every night, if someone wanted to frame me, then it wouldn't be hard for them to pick a time when I had no alibi."

Raising an eyebrow, Nico snorted, "Who the hell goes jogging at midnight and then manages to wake up before sunrise?"

With a glint in his eye, Will launched into a heated explanation of the benefits of sectioned sleeping rather than going a full eight hours at once that nearly exasperated Nico to tears.

"Are you serious?" Annabeth laughed.

Piper grinned, "So now I'm a devoted green tea drinker, and when my job allows, sleep in four hour blocks. Dr. William Solace is a health nut, but he's a damn good persuasive health nut."

Annabeth shook her head slowly and looked at Piper, "That's enough, back on track. What's his motive? I mean he's been volunteering at the hospital since he was in high school, the director of the hospital loves him, he's successfully treated over a hundred children, could be considered the best in his field. Why would he suddenly go kill a child?"

Nico pressed his lips together, "It says here that some of the staff heard you had an altercation with Octavian Apollus a day before the murder. Care to explain?"

Rubbing his head sheepishly, Will recounted, "So Octavian and I butt heads a lot. He's in charge of the finances of the hospital and I…ah… have a tendency of charging less or nothing for some patients. He was yelling at me as usual and I just lost my temper and grabbed his collar and said he's a heartless…jerk."

Nico looked at the witness statements, including Will's colourful language and stifled a laugh. "Do you think that Octavian might have been the one to kill Darcy to try and get you fired?"

Will pursed his lips, looking a bit upset. "I don't think so, I certainly hope not. Octavian can be a hard-ass sometimes, but he does keep the hospital running. Sometimes I think his job is even harder than mine."

Glancing at the photo of Octavian, Nico couldn't help but think that Octavian looked completely capable of committing a murder. A skinny man with sallow skin and washed out blonde hair, Octavian's face seemed fixed in a permanent scowl unlike Will's everlasting cheery expression.

"Hmm, Octavian doesn't have an alibi either." Nico mused out loud, tapping his pen absentmindedly, sipping the steaming drink Will placed in front of him. He paused and glared at the liquid. "What the hell is this?"

"Language," Will said breezily from the sink where he was washing Nico's plate. "It's Earl Grey tea. Fulfils all your caffeine needs and provides much more nutritional value than coffee."

The first thing that crossed Nico's mind was how incredibly domestic this was, causing him to blush heatedly. The second thing occurred to him was that Will was forcing this tea upon him. "I didn't request this," Nico muttered.

"Doctor's orders," winked Will.

"What about this Octavian character," Annabeth asked, "He doesn't have an alibi either. He lives at in a bungalow by himself, and he has access to the hospital."

Piper nodded, "Yes, but Will has a more intimate knowledge of the hospital's layout, and he fits the description of the figure leaving the hospital moreso than Octavian."

Annabeth narrowed her eyes. There was still a chance that Octavian could have done it. She rubbed a hand across her face, "Do you honestly think Will did it?" There was a heartbeat of silence.

As Nico watched Will wave his hands dramatically in the air, eyes shining as he rambled off medical facts, he couldn't bring himself to believe that this man could have killed an innocent child.

"I don't know," Piper admitted.

Please leave reviews and let me know what you think! I hope the format of flashing between two different conversations wasn't too confusing :/

Everything really picks up in the next chapter!