That was how good men built a company that sent lawyers to widows: one legally safe silence at a time.

Corbin looked at the reporters, and understood that his whole inheritance had come down to this single unremarkable fork, faced over and over across two generations, and that he was the first Stanford in a long time standing at it who intended to choose the other way.

So he said the costly thing out loud, into the microphones, and felt the fortune begin to move away from him as he spoke, and found that he did not reach for it.

Chapter 17 — The Cost