All he had to do was say less.

And that, he understood, was the whole quiet trap that had swallowed his father and his father’s board and every executive before him — not a single dramatic act of villainy, but a long series of moments exactly like this one, in which a man could keep his fortune intact by simply declining to say the true and costly thing, and chose, each time, to keep the fortune.

No one of those choices had felt like corruption.

Each had felt like prudence, like responsibility, like protecting the family and the firm.