I built that estate in my thirties, out of a company I had started in a rented room, through a decade of work so relentless that I sometimes forgot to eat.

By the time I met Luca, I was already, by then, a wealthy and formidable woman, and I think that was precisely the problem, because I was also a tired one, and a lonely one, and when a charming man and his warm-seeming family folded themselves around me and called me theirs, some worn-down part of me was so grateful to belong to something that I did not look too closely at what belonging was costing me.

I let Wendy host in my house because it felt like family.

I let Stephanie hang her portraits because objecting felt petty.