The workers Leopold had invoked as hostages were the exact reason the rescue came at all.

Adele had asked Bram about it later, quietly, in the hospital — whether it wouldn’t have been simpler, cleaner, to just let the company fall and buy the pieces cheap, the way men in his world usually did.

He had shaken his head.

“Your grandmother built something real,” he’d said.

“People make things there.

Actual boxes that hold actual goods that get to actual doors.