And there it was, the story he had told himself, the story he needed in order to survive what he had become: that he had built something, and that I had taken it.

I leaned slightly forward across my aunt’s desk.

“I didn’t take anything from you, Luca,” I said.

“Listen to me, because this is the last thing I am ever going to explain to you.

You built a company on the back of my late-night editing work, the income that kept our household running while you played executive.

You guaranteed it with my aunt’s trust, though you never knew that’s what it was.

You housed it in my family’s building, on the forty-second floor of my inheritance.