“To who Patrick really was.”
I drove home in a haze, the card burning in my pocket. The house felt hollow without him. My mother had died years earlier. Now it was just me—and questions I’d never thought to ask.
The next morning, I called the number.
“C.B.,” a calm voice answered.
“My name is Alistair Hayes,” I said. “My stepfather… Patrick Hayes.”
There was a pause. Then the voice softened.
“Please come in. He was… a legend here.”
The office was tucked inside an ordinary downtown building, easy to overlook. Inside, the security was anything but ordinary. I was escorted to a conference room, where a woman named Catherine was waiting.
She didn’t waste time.
