บททั้งหมดของ What The Silence Buried : บทที่ 1 - บทที่ 7

“He’s not coming, is he.”It wasn’t a question. Priya said it low, at Naomi’s shoulder, while the line of mourners kept moving past them like nothing in the world had stopped.Naomi didn’t answer. Answering would have made it real in a different way than her father’s coffin already had.Her father died two weeks ago. His heart, the doctors said, though everyone in the room understood what had actually killed him. The federal audit into Ashford Logistics had been closing in for months, and Warren Ashford had spent those months performing a calm he clearly did not feel.Now Naomi stood in the receiving line at his funeral, shaking hands she barely registered, while a small, well dressed crowd murmured behind cupped palms about the numbers that were about to become public.She was not crying the way people expected her to. She and her father had never been simple. He had raised her to run toward every fire he started, and she had spent her whole life doing exactly that, mistaking the run

“You’re sure that’s what he said? Word for word?”Priya’s voice was quiet, careful, the way people spoke when they were still deciding whether to believe something.“Word for word,” Naomi said.Marcus’s words were still sitting heavy between them, filling the penthouse in a way six years of silence never had.“I’ll start pulling on it,” Priya said, settling onto the arm of the sofa. “Quietly.”Naomi nodded and looked around the living room she’d once called home. “It’s only a claim right now. Nothing I can use yet. What matters today is getting my things out of this apartment.”“And I’m here for exactly that,” Priya said. She’d cleared her whole afternoon without being asked.Whatever Marcus had told her would have to wait for proof. Acting on it too soon would only hand Julian’s family time to bury it deeper.Naomi had already decided she’d stay with Priya until she figured out what came next. Leaving the city entirely had crossed her mind more than once this past week, but she wasn’

“Naomi.”Julian said her name like it cost him something. She turned around anyway.Not slowly. Not for effect. Just turned, the way you do once you’ve stopped caring what your face gives away.Julian saw her first. Something crossed his expression that was hard to name, gone before it could fully land, like a man catching himself mid fall. He stepped back from the group without a word, his body reacting before his composure could catch up to it. She watched him hold his breath for the length of her walk across the room, the way he used to hold it right before telling her something he didn’t want to say out loud. She told herself it meant nothing. She was less sure of that than she wanted to be.For one unguarded second his eyes moved over her face like he was trying to memorize what he’d just lost, and then he caught himself doing it and looked away first, jaw tight, like a man closing a door he’d forgotten he’d left open.Theo and the board member went silent the second they realize

“Found him.”Priya said it like a verdict, spinning her laptop around to face Naomi. Fifteen minutes. That was all it had taken.Walter Griggs, sixty one years old, retired from the state corrections system after nineteen years in records compliance. Clean record before that too, six years in county administration, no complaints on file, nothing flagged in any database Priya’s contacts could reach.He’d retired eighteen months ago, earlier than his pension timeline suggested he’d planned to. The state’s internal directory still listed him as active. Nobody had bothered to update it.“He didn’t retire,” Priya said, scrolling through what little there was. “Nineteen years and then a sudden stop with no send off, no notice in the union bulletin, nothing. That’s not retirement. That’s an exit.”“That’s someone being managed out,” Naomi said.Priya looked up. “Which means whatever he has, someone already suspected he might have it. If Julian’s people reorganized those liaison files two yea