“I am ordering a complete independent audit,” Corbin said into the phone, still looking at Marshall, “of every email, every equipment log, and every legal settlement tied to that project.”

Marshall stepped forward.

“Corbin, consider the legal and financial impact on the family business before you take such a drastic step.”

Corbin looked his attorney in the eye.

“For the first time in my career, that is precisely what I am doing.”

Vivian shook her head.

“Your father spent forty years building the reputation of Stanford Development.” And Corbin looked slowly around the small apartment — at the baby clothes drying on the metal rack, at the secondhand furniture, at the thick blue envelope of original safety reports that a widow had kept sealed in plastic for four years because it was the only protection anyone had ever given her — and he understood the true nature of what his father had built, and what it had been built on.

“Then I need to find out,” he said quietly, “exactly what foundation he built it on.” It was not a rejection of his father, exactly, though it would be received as one.