That is what he saw in my face: not just a rival claimant, but the living proof that everything he was, everything he had, everything he had believed about his father and himself, rested on a stolen foundation.

It is no wonder he bowed his head and walked out in silence.

There was nothing to say.

You cannot argue with a face.

And I did not gloat, watching him go, though I had every reason to.

Because I understood, looking at Julian, that he too was, in his way, a victim of Harrison’s original sin, raised without love in a house full of money, taught to value nothing but wealth by a father who had traded everything for it, grown hollow and grasping because that was the only inheritance his father had truly given him.

Harrison’s letter had called his children monsters.