And then, with what legitimate assets remained to him — the ones my father had not yet managed to reach — he had done the one thing that would put them permanently beyond the family’s grasp.

He had placed them into an irrevocable trust: the Harrison Vance Irrevocable Trust.

And he had named, as its sole trustee, the one member of the family who had never taken anything from him and who happened to possess exactly the professional skill required to defend it.

Me.

The cedar music box — the toy, the joke, the thing Chloe had laughed at — held the original trust seal and a small brass key, and it was worth, in the end, more than everything the other three had inherited combined, because it was the key to the machine my grandfather had built to take it all back.

I sat on his floor until the windows went gray, holding that brass key, and I did the only crying I have ever done over him, and then I stopped, and I got up, and I went to work.