YOU CALLED ME NOTHING. NOW BOW.

Episode five: The fire I never questioned

I watched my grandfather walk away with Shaznay, and a rage so deep it had no bottom tore through my chest.

Thirty percent. He gave her thirty percent of everything my family built over four generations. This woman. This quiet, wide-eyed woman who destroyed my world when I was seventeen years old and somehow wormed her way into my grandfather's heart.

I turned and slammed my fist against the hallway wall. The pain was good. It was real. It was better than the confusion eating me alive.

"Richard." Victor appeared behind me, his hands in his pockets, his expression unreadable. "Come outside. You need air."

I followed him because the alternative was going back into that ballroom and doing something I would regret. We walked through the garden until the noise of the party faded behind us. The night air was cold. I loosened my tie and breathed deep.

"Your grandfather knows what he is doing," Victor said quietly.

"He has lost his mind."

"Has he?" Victor looked at me sideways. "In fifty years of running that company, has Sylvanus Williams ever made a single decision without reason?"

I did not answer because the answer was no. Never. Not once.

"Then why?" I asked the night sky. "Why her?"

Victor was quiet for a long time. We stood under the old oak tree at the edge of the property, the one my brother and I used to climb as children. Before the fire took him from me. Before Shaznay took him from me.

"Richard." Victor's voice changed. It became careful, measured. "I need to ask you something, and I need you to think before you answer."

I looked at him.

"Why do you believe Shaznay started that fire?"

My chest locked up. "You know why. Tonia saw her."

"Tonia told you she saw her."

"What is the difference?"

Victor turned to face me fully. "The difference is one involves evidence and the other involves a sixteen-year-old girl's word. Richard, I was there that night too."

The ground shifted beneath my feet. "What?"

"I was at the property that night. I never told you because I was scared. I was a teenager, and I was terrified. But I saw someone near the building minutes before the fire started."

My heart pounded so loud it drowned out the party music drifting from the house. "Who?"

"It was not Shaznay."

"Then WHO?"

Victor shook his head. "I can not say. Not yet. I need proof because what I saw... it would destroy someone. And if I am wrong, I destroy an innocent person."

I grabbed his jacket. "Tell me. Right now."

He removed my hands gently but firmly. "Get proof first. Ask yourself this: where was Shaznay that night? Not where Tonia told you she was. Where was she actually? Find that answer, and you will understand why your grandfather just handed her thirty percent of your life."

He walked away. Left me alone under that oak tree with twelve years of certainty crumbling like ash in my hands.

The fire. The night that split my life into before and after. My brother was nine years old. The warehouse on the edge of our estate. No one knew why he was there. No one knew how the fire started. But Tonia told me she saw Shaznay running from the building. She cried when she told me. She held my face and said, "I am so sorry, Richard. I saw her. I wish I had not, but I saw her."

I hated Shaznay from that day forward. Hated her with every breath. When grandfather forced this marriage on me, I treated it as a punishment. A daily reminder of what she took from me. And Shaznay... she looked at me with those soft brown eyes and never once defended herself. Never once said, "It was not me." Which only made me hate her more because her silence felt like guilt.

But Victor's words would not leave me. Where was Shaznay that night?

I pulled out my phone and dialed a number I had not used in years. A man answered on the second ring.

"Jackson." My voice was hard. "I need you to find something for me."

Jackson was a private investigator. The best in Crestfield. He had worked for my family before, and he did not ask unnecessary questions.

"What am I looking for?" he said.

"A fire. Twelve years ago, at the Williams property. The warehouse on the east end. I need hospital records, police reports, anything that shows where a girl named Shaznay was on the night of March 14th. She would have been fifteen at the time, living with the Benjamin family."

"Timeframe?"

"I need it by morning."

"That is fast."

"I will pay triple."

"Done."

I hung up. I stood alone in that dark garden, and for the first time in twelve years, a thought entered my mind that I had never allowed before: what if I was wrong?

And if I was wrong about the fire, then what had I done to that woman for the last year? What had I put her through?

I walked back toward the house, but I did not go inside. I sat on the front steps and watched guests trickle out to their cars. I watched Tonia leave in a taxi, her face tight with anger. I watched Dorinda rush to her car without saying goodbye to anyone.

And then I saw Shaznay.

She came out alone, hugging her arms against the cold night air. No coat. No one beside her. She stood at the top of the steps looking lost, as if she did not know whether to call a car or simply start walking.

She did not see me in the shadows.

I watched her pull out her phone. Her face was lit by the screen's glow, and in that light, I noticed something I had never seen before. She looked tired. Not the tiredness of one bad night, but the tiredness of someone who has been carrying something heavy for a very long time. Her hand moved to her stomach, resting there for just a moment before pulling away.

My grandfather's car pulled up, and she got in. The red tail lights disappeared down the hill.

I sat on those steps until my phone buzzed at 4 AM. Jackson.

"Got something," he said. "You are not going to like it."