That was not an accident.

That was the design.

A fortune built on job sites where men could die stayed comfortable to own only so long as its owner never traced any single small thing all the way down to what it rested on.

And Corbin had, by pure chance, traced one — had followed a whispered twenty-eight dollars out of his kitchen, down a stairwell, into an apartment, and straight into the blue envelope at the bottom of it all — and having once made that descent, he found he could no longer un-know that every large clean number he had ever been proud of had a small human number underneath it somewhere, and that he had a responsibility, from now on, to follow them down.

It was the end of a certain kind of innocence, and he did not mourn it.