Lady Beatrice sat in the library, enjoying a rare moment of peace with a book, when a shadow fell across the page.
Leo stood there. He wasn’t playing with his cousins; he was holding a leather-bound ledger he had pulled from the restricted archives.
“Grandmother,” Leo said, his voice polite but hollow. “I found a discrepancy in the flight logs from 1994.”
Beatrice stiffened. “Leo, those are dusty old records. Why are you reading them?”
“Grandfather took six trips to Zurich that year,” Leo continued, opening the book. “He listed them as ‘Banking Conferences.’ But looking at the Swiss corporate registry, there were no conferences on those dates. He stayed for three weeks each time.”
Leo looked up, his dark eyes boring into hers. “He wasn’t banking, was he? He was visiting someone.”
Beatrice felt a cold prickle of sweat on her neck. She remembered 1994. She remembered Alistair vanishing, returning with mud on his boots and a terrifying silence.
“He had… private interests,” Beatrice stammered, standing up to leave. “It is best not to dig up the floorboards, Leo. You might not like what is buried underneath.”
“I don’t mind the dirt,” Leo whispered to the empty room as she fled. “I just need to know who else is buried in it.”,