Present Day

John held his chin in his hands, watching London below him from his position in his office. A knock on the door alerted him and John turned to see Talbot leading Alex Green into the office. Neither one looked particularly happy about it but John nodded Talbot back to his position before motioning to a chair.

"Please have a seat, Mr. Green."

"I don't like being summoned."

"I'm sure, in your reduced position, you'll get used to it." John took his seat as Green did. "But that's not why I called you here."

"Oh, something on your mind?" Green sneered, "Like my wife was on your-"

"We'll get to that in a moment." John stroked his fingers along the desk, engaging the listening devices in the room in what appeared like nothing more than a removal of dust. "What can you tell me about the missing papers from Matthew Crawley's valise in his murder case fifteen years ago?"

Green spluttered a laugh, "What?"

"It's a simple question, Mr. Green." John leaned forward, "You do remember the murder trial involving Matthew Crawley yes? He was investigating your company at the time so I can't imagine you forgot him so easily."

Green snorted, shaking his head, "I knew you had to be eccentric but I didn't think you were a mad conspiracy theorist too."

"Why'd you say that?"

"Because I remember when that case took up all the news band and everyone was awash with their theories all over the fledgling internet." Green made a motion as if tracing a headline in the air. "Mad veteran guns down innocent solicitor in alleyway… everyone thought it was something deeper. Some kind of government involvement or some such nonsense."

"Sounds like a bad TV movie."

"Don't they always? They made Enemy of the State after all."

"That wasn't a bad movie." John shrugged, "Maybe they would've made this one too if the story was good enough."

"They never got to make it since the bugger who killed Matthew Crawley died in prison." Green shrugged, "There were conspiracy theories everywhere after that, convinced the government killed him to hide something. It's about as mad as those people who think NASA never landed on the moon."

"Then you found it happy coincidence the man investigating possible infractions on behalf of your company in a merger at the time just turned up dead in an alley?"

Green narrowed his eyes, "Why do you care?"

"I'm interested in the kind of mess I just inherited."

"Then maybe you should've left it to me."

It was John's turn to laugh, "And continue to watch you muck it up by running your company into the ground? I don't think so."

"What goes around comes around, Mr. Christian." Green shifted in his chair, slouching slightly. "We all get a turn on the good side of fate."

"Is that what you'd call Matthew Crawley's murder?"

"Other people use the term providence but I've never been very religious."

John studied him before nodding, "Yes, I don't think I could see that for you."

"You're very judgmental for a man who doesn't even know me." Green paused, grinding his teeth slightly, "Except for whatever my wife told you in pillow talk the other night."

"You did come up in conversation but mostly by negative comparison." John bit back his grin at Green's trembling jaw. "But that's neither here nor there since she's already served you the divorce papers."

"She's not getting a penny from me."

"She won't need your money." John pulled a paper from his drawer, passing it over the desk for Green to read. "Especially since you don't really have money anymore and whatever is left is no longer yours."

"Excuse me?" Green yanked the paper closer to study it.

"I'm sure you're aware that I recently acquired all of Simon Bricker's assets."

"I'd heard he sold up." Green held the paper up, "But whatever this is you can use it to wipe your ass… or shove it up there, I don't much care which it is but I'll never sign it."

"Mr. Bricker's really hoping you will."

"Then he can get stuffed along with you and you can bugger each other for all I care." Green threw the paper at John but it just caught air and settled limply on the floor. "I'm not giving you everything."

"You already have, Mr. Green." John pulled another file from his desk before handing it over to Green. "Those are just copies because the Fraud Squad's got the originals but they'll be enough to seize your company and freeze your assets."

Green frowned, throwing the file open to look over the documents in a hurry. After a moment he grabbed the file and threw it to the floor, the papers flying everywhere. His shaking finger pointed at John over the desk.

"Wasn't it enough you screwed my wife? You had to take my company from me too in this… this lie?"

"You wouldn't be so angry if it were a lie, Mr. Green, you'd be threatening me with solicitors and law firms with too many names and not enough brains." John sat back town, forming his fingers into a steeple. "What really grinds you is that I didn't have to take your wife. She came willingly."

"She always was a gold digger." Green sniggered, "Did she take any of your money or is she trying to convince you she's a whore with a heart of gold."

"I'd watch my tone when you speak about Ms. Smith that way."

Green cackled, "Her name's still Mrs. Green because she's still my wife, and divorce papers or no she'll coming running back to me because she ran to me years ago. She always runs to me."

"You mean when you orchestrated Matthew Crawley's murder with Simon Bricker so the poor man wouldn't find out that you took over Bricker's smuggling ring through his international import business?"

"What Simon Bricker did or didn't do with his company fifteen years ago isn't any bother to me now."

"It wasn't a bother to you then either." John pressed on the desk, trying to contain himself as he stood again to be eye-level with Green. "What you cared about was who you could get to take the fall for your little scheme. What poor idiot you could frame as a delusional vet taking out his PTSD on a bloke going home to his wife and son."

"You don't know anything about it."

"Then explain it to me, Mr. Green, and I might put in a good word for you in terms of the Fraud Squad and the lawyers I've got pouring over your financials just two floors below us." John held his breath, risking it all on the edge of a thin limb. "What don't I know about it?"

"That vet was my friend." Green nodded his head, "My friend went mad and shot some poor bastard in the street. No explanation just bang, dead. And then he held the body as it bled out. He left his girlfriend, his job, his life for what? A moment to kill a shadow."

John tightened all the muscles in his neck to restrain himself from leaping over the desk to strangle Alex Green with his own two hands. "You don't believe that."

Green shrugged, "After all this time that's the truth to it, Mr. Christian. The truth to the death of the poor bugger, Matthew Crawley, is that he died for nothing but a fiction."

"Whose fiction, Mr. Green?"

"According to the papers, John Bates's."

"And according to you?"

Green let a small smirk twitch at the corner of his mouth, "As I said earlier, sometimes fate swings toward our good… if we're lucky."

"Luck favors the bold."

"And the prepared." Green gestured to the papers on the floor. "Try as you might to bury me in this mess it won't stick. Things like this never do."

"That might've been true when you had money but now that you're practically bankrupt and your company is in the hands of more capable people I doubt you could say that anymore." John smiled at the slight paleness in Green's face. "Watch how your friends abandon you in droves when you've got nothing to offer them but your empty platitudes."

"What, going after my friends now too?"

"It's not sporting to tell your opponent how you'll take out their knees but I feel a bit of pity for you." John pointed to the pile on the floor, "This is just the beginning. Every inch of your life'll be laid out for inspection and autopsy."

"You'll dissect my life?"

"You've obviously not studied me as intently as your son did." John turned toward the window, "This is how I do business, Mr. Green. I know the people I get into bed with and I know how they can benefit or hinder me before I take the risk."

"Is that how you wooed my wife? Told her she'd be a help instead of a hindrance?"

"No," John faced Green again, "I simply told her who I was and what happened. All the rest was pretty organic."

"Who you are?" Green scoffed, "A money-grubbing goliath intent on toppling everything until you own the world?"

"I'm amazed you held onto your company as long as you did when you've obviously got no sense for how businesses are run or the kind of people who run them." John shook his head, "Your father always said as much."

Green's jaw dropped a moment until he brought it back up to grind his teeth. "Don't you dare talk about my father."

"Why, because he'd be ashamed of the son that cavorts with prostitutes, spends money he doesn't have, and then drives the company he slaved to build right into the ground?" John lifted a hand, "I guess I'd try to stay away from his memory too if I were you."

"You don't know a thing about it." Green leveled his finger at John, whole body quivering with whatever rage he tried to contain. "You don't know my father."

"I did. A long time ago, to be sure, but I also know that he trusted you son more than he did you." John flipped through a few of the papers on the desk and drew one out, "Yes, his will left everything to your son instead of you."

"How'd you get that?"

John ignored the question, clicking his tongue against his teeth, "That kind of rejection must've rankled something awful."

"Leave it before-"

"Before what?" John dropped the paper, "Before you try and outspend me or bring in solicitors or try and take a crack at my jaw? What will you do to me Mr. Green?"

"I can break your jaw."

"I'd like to see you try." John took a step toward Green and the other man shrank back a pace. "I'm not a frail old man, dying with an oxygen tank strapped under my nose that you injected with his own oxygen to clot the blood in his veins."

"You can't prove that."

"I'm sure I could with the signed exhumation order."

"I wouldn't sign it."

"But you don't have to." John pointed to the pile of papers on the floor, "Your son, as his sole inheritor, could and I'm sure he would if I told him you killed his grandfather."

"You don't know a thing about it." Green snarled, "Whatever happened to my father, he deserved what he got and I couldn't be happier when he died."

Four Years Ago

Green threw the pillow over his head when someone violently wrenched the curtains back. "Leave me be."

"I've left you be until noon." He lifted the pillow enough to see the image of Anna, pouring water into a drink that immediately fizzed. "Your father's been asking after you for half an hour and I don't want to delay his request any longer."

Green groaned, pulling the pillow back and sitting up slightly before putting his palm to his forehead, wincing. "Then you talk to him. He likes you better anyway."

"True as that is," Anna waited until he took the glass from her hand and then folded her arms over her chest, "He wants to speak to you. I've been with him for as long as he could stand me but now he wants to talk to you."

"Probably just to complain about how I don't take enough interest in his company of my family."

"You do smell like a cheap whore." Anna picked his discarded shirt from the end of the bed, holding it up for inspection, "Was she expensive?"

"What do you care? You don't even sleep in the same bed with me anymore."

"And whose fault is that?"

"I'm not going to argue with you." Green downed the drink in a few gulps, coughing before leaving it on the bedside table next to the others just like it. "I haven't the time apparently."

"Not that you'd take it even if you had it."

Green stopped, the boxers he yanked up his legs stopping just sigh of his waist, "I don't remember you complaining about the time I spent away from you when you heard about John's death."

"That was eleven years ago, Alex." Anna threw her hands up n the air, "Why do you always throw that back in my face?"

"Because we both know you only took me on as the next best option with your heart all broken." Green dug around a pile on the floor and extracted a polo shirt and some trousers not too grubby looking. "But you didn't complain this much when I took you out of that shithole you called a flat to give you all this."

"You always make it sound like charity."

"Wasn't it?" Green tugged his trousers up, kicking around the floor for a belt. "I didn't have to marry you."

"No, you didn't." Anna shook her head, "And maybe you shouldn't have."

Green paused, "Excuse me?"

"We've not been married for a long time, Alex. You don't even sleep in the same part of the house as Jack and I, much less the same bed as me. We haven't had sex in ages and all we ever do when we see one another is bicker and fight." Anna took a breath, "I've been talking to a solicitor and I want a divorce."

Green ground his teeth, "And do what? Go where? You've got no skills and you've got no friends."

"I beg to differ on both counts but I'm just holding you up." Anna flung the door open, "Your father wants to see you and I've already taken up too much of your day."

"Anna-" Green called after her but she was already gone.

With a sigh he trudged, barefoot, down the halls toward his father's suite of rooms. The nurse at the door gave his obligatory smile and left the room as Green walked toward his father's chair in the corner by the fire. Taking the seat across from him, the lull of the oxygen machine beeping and hissing with the rhythm of a heartbeat, Green opened his hands to his father.

"What?"

"I thought I taught you more respect than that." Green Sr. turned a page in his book before marking it to set on the table next to his chair. "Instead I find I raised a complete fool."

"Always quick with the compliments aren't you father?" Green ground out, "What do you want from me?"

"Nothing you can give me now."

"I give you my time, I gave you my life, and I gave you the grandson you wanted. Isn't that enough?" Green scoffed, "To hear you speak you'd think I was your greatest disappointment."

"Not my greatest, no."

Green swallowed, biting the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste blood. "Well, I guess there's nothing more to be said then."

He went to leave when his father's voice rang out again. "Sit your ass in that chair because you'll leave when I say and not a moment before."

Green took his seat again, fingers clutching at the armrests. "Why should I stay and wait for you to berate me?"

"Because I obviously didn't do enough of that when you were young to teach you humility." His wrinkled finger tapped on a pile of papers next to the book on the table. "You may believe my failing eyesight prevents me reading the results of your mismanagement of my company."

"It's a phase, it'll pass."

"Not with you driving this company into the ground." The older man's breath rattled in his chest. "Don't you know anything about business? I sent you to school to learn it and what'd you do? Drank and gambled and slept your way through it. You wasted every opportunity I gave you."

"I was living my life."

"On my money."

"What does it matter whose money it is since it'll all be my money one day anyway?"

"That's where you're wrong." Green tried to swallow past the tightening in his throat. "I'm leaving it all to Jack."

"Jack's twelve."

"Jack's more capable at twelve than you are at more than three times his age." Green Sr. sighed, "Sometimes I wonder if you could ever really be my son since the acumen for what we do obviously skipped over you."

"Or just got misplaced?" Green sneered, "Maybe you're real son was someone else."

"What are you talking about?"

"You never really wanted me as your son." Green threw up a hand. "It was John you wanted. John you raved about. John you praised until you were blue in the face. It was like he was really your son and not me."

"John had skills, determination, and humility."

"None of which I've got."

"Apparently none at all." Green Sr. waved his hand toward the door. "If you want to bitch and moan then you can do it away from me. I'm done with you anyway."

"Was that all you wanted to say to me?" Green stuttered, "You call me all the way in here to say that my son's getting all your money and your company and whatnot and then you'll just dismiss me like I work for you?"

"You did work for me." Green Sr. sniffed, "Not anymore. Once you leave I'll finalized the details with my solicitor in the hall and you'll be cut off from everything in the company. The money, the accounts, and your family."

"You can't do that."

"I can and I will." Green Sr. leveled his finger at Green, "I'm taking Anna's side in her hopes to divorce you and I'll do everything in my power to leave you with nothing."

"Because I am nothing?"

"Because you've become nothing." Green Sr. shook his head, "So much wasted potential when you could've been something great."

"I guess trees grow small in the shadow of towering oaks."

"I guess you can't plant anything in shit soil." Green Sr. picked up his book, "Send in my solicitor on your way out and may you never darken my doorways again."

Green stood up to go, walking toward the door behind his father's chair. Something caught his eye and he paused. Picking up the empty syringe he looked over at his father, engrossed in his book, and tightened his hold on the syringe.

Faster than the old man could fathom, Green filled the syringe with air and stabbed it into one of the pulsing arteries in the man's hand. He gasped, trying to yell for help, but Green covered his mouth until the syringe was empty. Green stepped back, syringe in his hand, and watched his father gasp for his final moments of breath before his body shuddered.

The stroke passed quickly, leaving Green Sr.'s mouth to dangle as wide as his dilated eyes. Green took a few deep breaths, tossing the syringe in his hand into the fire, and ran for the door. With a shout the nurse ran in, checking over Green Sr., with Anna on his heels. After a moment the nurse shook his head and Anna hurried to dial the ambulance on her mobile.

Over the next few hours Green thought the world only appeared a blur. Flashing lights for the ambulance, the white halls of hospital with the choking scent of cleaner only barely covering the smell of sick, and then the official announcement. Anna cried, Jack sobbing into her shoulder as well, and Green held them close.

It all felt right again.

Right when he delivered the stirring eulogy at his father's funeral. Right when the solicitor confirmed that while Jack inherited the majority of the estate, it was held in trust until he graduated with Green as the executor, and Green was still employed by the company. Right when Anna, victim of her grief, turned to Green for comfort and they found happiness together for a time.

And, in the dark of the night with Anna curled up by his side where she belonged, Green relished the power of putting the world right again. Back where it belonged again. In his grasp again.

Death made it all right again.

Present Day

John took a breath, noting the rapid rise and fall of Green's chest. "That's what you think? When you drove your son's inheritance into the ground and basically flushed your father's company down the toilet after his death? That he deserved what he got?"

"My father was a mean-spirited, withered, detestable crone that is better in the ground than at the head of any company."

"Your father was a good man with a kind heart and a noble soul."

Green let out a mocking laugh, "You sound just like John Bates did. Always believing my father was a perfect man."

"I never said your father was perfect. Only that he was a good man." John cringed, holding himself at the ready when Green's eyes widened.

"What did you just say?"

"I said that I never thought your father was a perfect man, only a good one." John took a deep breath, "I worked with him a few times in the building of my business and I know the kind of man he was."

"And a few times is enough to tell you about a man?"

"Told me what I needed to know about you."

"So you're a psychologist too?" Green jeered, "You're nothing but a power mad, money grabbing, adulterer."

"Don't pin your sins on me, Mr. Green."

"Then don't try and take what doesn't belong to you." Green put his face right in John's. "Stay away from my company, my son, and my wife."

"But it's not your company anymore." John held his own, "And when it comes to your son, perhaps if you'd spent any time with him at all he'd have gone to you instead of to me. Same goes for your wife."

"We're done here." Green stomped to the door, wrenching it open, "Don't think you've won anything here today Mr. Christian."

"And don't think I've given up on the subject of Matthew Crawley or your father, Mr. Green."

Green left the room without a response.