He had watched Grayson climb, and he had watched the manner of the climbing, and he had made his disapproval of how his son treated me plain more than once before he died.

When Delphine learned I was pregnant, she did not see three grandchildren.

She saw a threat — to the corporate merger she was orchestrating, to the careful distribution of the family’s assets, to the whole architecture of money and standing she had spent her life defending.

So she made the children disappear before they could exist to anyone who mattered.

She blocked my number.

She deleted my emails.