Under the terms of that trust, the birth of legitimate heirs was the event that would trigger his full control of the company, and my desperate, tearful, years-long effort to get pregnant had been, from his side of the bed, the slow arming of a device he intended to detonate the moment it was ready.

My children were conceived, as far as their father was concerned, to be a key that turned a lock.

I do not think there is a crueler thing to learn about the origin of one’s own longed-for children.

And here is what I decided, holding my sons that first night at Arthur’s estate: that it would stop with him.

That whatever Marcus had intended them to be, that was Marcus’s crime and not their identity.

My sons were not a strategy.