My father's voice was not on the recording.
That was the first thing I noticed: The call had been captured from Hale's end, which meant Robert Calloway was the silence between Hale's sentences. The responses I couldn't hear. The man I was straining to find in the gaps.
But Hale's voice was enough.
He spoke with the particular ease of someone who had never once believed in consequences. Unhurried. Almost conversational. The tone of a man discussing weather rather than the systematic destruction of two families.
"Robert. I'll be brief because I think we both understand where this conversation ends. You have two choices. You sign the company over full transfer, clean documentation, completed within thirty days, or I exercise the alternatives I've outlined. The financial exposure I've pr
