Dorothy told the story slowly, like she was navigating it by feel, the way someone walks through a dark room they used to know well but haven’t entered in years.
“Beta Reed handled a great deal of the pack’s outside correspondence,” she said. “Contracts, contacts beyond Silverridge’s borders. People your father did not deal with directly, because dealing with them directly would have meant getting his own hands dirty.” She wrapped her fingers tighter around the cold cup of tea. “I did not understand, at the time, what that correspondence was for. I was a housekeeper. I cleaned the study. I did not read the man’s letters.”
“But you saw something,” Caden said. Not a question.
“I saw a name, once, on a torn piece of paper in the wastebasket, after he’d been on the phone half the night, sho
