He had already begun to notice the story the media wanted to tell — the one in which a wealthy man had nobly rescued a poor widow, the millionaire as savior, the grateful mother lifted from poverty by his generosity.

He rejected it, firmly and completely, and sitting behind Lianna rather than beside her was part of how he rejected it.

Because the story was false.

He had not rescued anyone.

Lianna Prescott had preserved the critical evidence, sealed in plastic, through four years of grief and poverty, when discarding it would have been easier.

Nathan Prescott had raised the original warning, in writing, at the cost of his life.

The truth had been carried, the whole way, by the family that the company had wronged; Corbin had merely, at the very end, stopped his own institution from continuing to bury it.