It is beautiful, the fierce love between them, the way Valeria placed herself between Sofia and harm, the way Sofia’s first frightened thought was for her sister rather than herself.

But it is a terrible kind of beautiful, because they should never have needed it.

That bond, that reflexive mutual defense, is the kind of thing children develop in war zones, in disasters, in homes where the adults have failed them so completely that the children have no one to rely on but each other.

My daughters lived in a mansion in Bel-Air with a father worth billions, and they had been forced to become each other’s protectors as though they were orphans in a storm.

The wealth I had built them was supposed to keep them safe.