They did not go to prison — the one mercy I allowed, pulling back from criminal prosecution in exchange for an ironclad written confession of the forgery, ensuring they could never touch me or my company again.

But the lifestyle they had spent forty years building to impress other people was gone in months.

A cramped two-bedroom in a dreary suburb.

The country-club membership resigned.

And the high-society friends they had worked so hard to impress stopped returning their calls the morning after the party.

People asked me, later, why I let them avoid prison — whether it was love, or weakness, or some lingering wish to protect them.