And so my father, in the last clear-eyed months of his life, had done something that still takes my breath away for its cold brilliance.

He had stopped trying to change his son and started, instead, to account for him — to build the situation in such a way that Leon’s own nature would carry him, inevitably, into the open.

The rumored fortune in the safe was the bait.

My father knew that as long as Leon believed there were millions behind that door, he would come for it, publicly, greedily, in front of the whole family, unable to help himself.

He was not wrong.

My brother walked into that study on the day of the funeral and demanded the key to a safe full of nothing but the evidence of his own crimes, because our father had understood, with terrible precision, that greed of Leon’s kind cannot be reasoned with.