We moved to the house afterward, and the relatives crowded into my father’s study, and Leon paced behind me the whole time, close, murmuring so only I could hear.

He told me I had manipulated a dying man.

He told me I had spent months poisoning our father’s mind against his own son.

He told me everyone could see what I was doing.

And by the fireplace stood his wife, Dahlia, in a set of diamonds I happened to know they could not possibly afford, watching me with a small fixed smile — the smile of a woman who has been promised that everything is about to be fine.

When Leon announced to the room, expansively, that the safe held at least two million dollars in cash and bearer bonds and property deeds, she stood a little straighter, as though she could already feel the weight of it.