Osei, across the room, closed his eyes for a moment, and then he wrote something down.

Sigrid never understood, I think, what she had done on that call, because she was operating on an assumption that had served her whole family for years: the assumption that I was still, underneath everything, a person who could be managed.

That is why she called.

In her mind, the criminal case was just a tantrum I was throwing, a bit of leverage in the real negotiation, which was always and only about the house.

She believed that if she framed it correctly — if she offered me forgiveness, if she suggested the video was a misunderstanding we could jointly agree to paper over — I would take the deal, because taking deals to keep the peace was what I had always done.

She was calling to close a transaction.