We do not get to choose what fortune we pass down, or whether it survives the people who inherit it.

But we get to choose, every day, in a hundred small unwatched decisions, what kind of person we are being — and that, it turns out, is the thing that reaches down through the years and saves our children, long after the money is spent and the names are forgotten.

Tucked in with the certified audit was a single handwritten page, addressed, across all those years, to me.

If you are ever reading this, my sweet Valeria, then something has gone wrong that I tried to guard against, and I am sorry I am not there to stand beside you for it.

Remember what I have always told you: that wealth makes cowards out of those who seek only to hoard it, and makes brave souls out of those willing to stand on the truth.

Stand on the truth, my darling.