Chapter 2 - The Name Everyone Pretended to ForgetThat evening, Corbin drove to his parents' house without calling first.
Richard Stanford lived fifteen minutes away in a Georgian mansion overlooking Narragansett Bay.
Corbin found his father in the library.
Richard looked surprised.
“Everything okay?”
Corbin poured himself a drink but didn't touch it.
“Do you remember Daniel Prescott?”
The effect was immediate.
Richard's hand stopped above the papers on his desk.
Only for a second.
But Corbin saw it.
“Should I?”
“You tell me.”
Richard leaned back.
“Corbin, I meet thousands of people.”
“This one worked with Stanford Development.”
Richard's expression hardened.
“Where did you hear that?”
Wrong answer.
Corbin had deliberately never said Daniel worked for the company.
Richard had just confirmed it himself.
Corbin placed the untouched glass down.
“So you do remember him.”
Richard stood.
“What is this about?”
“His widow works in my house.”
Richard went completely still.
“Lianna?”
Corbin's pulse quickened.
He hadn't told him her first name either.
His father knew.
“How do you know her name?”
Richard turned toward the window.
“Personnel records.”
“My household employees aren't in Stanford Development's personnel system.”
Silence.
Rain streaked the windows.
Corbin had spent his life respecting his father.
Richard had taught him how to negotiate.
How to lead.
How to protect the family business.
But now Corbin saw something he had almost never seen in Richard Stanford.
Fear.
“You need to let this go,” Richard finally said.
“Why?”
“Because Daniel Prescott has been dead for four years.”
“That doesn't answer my question.”
“It answers enough.”
Corbin stepped closer.
“What happened to him?”
Richard's eyes sharpened.
“Go home.”
Corbin laughed once.
It contained no humor.
“That's what Grandfather used to say whenever somebody asked something he didn't want to answer.”
Richard slammed his palm against the desk.
“Daniel Prescott betrayed this family!”
The words echoed through the library.
Corbin stared at him.
Finally.
Something real.
“How?”
Richard looked as though he regretted speaking.
“He stole confidential information.”
“What information?”
“Financial records.”
“Was he prosecuted?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Richard didn't answer.
Corbin's suspicion deepened.
“If he stole from us, why wasn't he arrested?”
“Because he died before the matter could be resolved.”
“How?”
Richard turned away.
“Car accident.”
Corbin remembered something.
Four years earlier.
A black sedan crushed against a guardrail outside Boston.
His grandmother crying in the library.
His uncle Malcolm angrily telling someone on the phone:
“He should have given us the envelope.”
Corbin's chest tightened.
Envelope.
He suddenly remembered that word.
“What envelope?”
Richard turned around.
For the first time, genuine alarm crossed his face.
“What did you say?”
“I asked what envelope.”
Richard walked toward him.
“Listen carefully. If Lianna Prescott has anything belonging to Daniel, you stay away from it.”
Corbin stared at his father.
“Why?”
Richard lowered his voice.
“Because Daniel didn't die over money.”
A chill moved through Corbin.
“Then what did he die over?”
Richard's jaw tightened.
But he said nothing.
Corbin left ten minutes later.
As he drove through the rain, he understood something terrifying.
He had gone to his father's house hoping to prove his suspicions were foolish.
Instead, Richard had confirmed almost every one of them.
Daniel Prescott had known something.
The Stanford family had wanted it buried.
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And somewhere, possibly inside Lianna's tiny apartment...
something Daniel left behind might still exist.
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