My hands did not begin to shake until I got to the accounting numbers, printed in dense columns on heavy parchment, and understood what they were describing.

My grandfather had secretly owned sixty-two percent of Palmer Construction.

Sixty-two percent.

The controlling stake.

The very company my father had spent twenty years telling everyone — telling me, telling business partners, telling anyone who would sit still — belonged entirely and solely to him.

“It was never transferred to your father,” Mr.