And because he believed those things, he was careless around me in ways he never would have been around an equal — he waved me toward documents without reading them himself, he spoke freely near me, he moved his stolen money without ever imagining that the woman across the breakfast table could read a corporate filing better than his accountants, that she owned the firm auditing him, that the family he mocked as gangsters were in fact a security expert and a forensic accountant and a defense attorney who would one day walk through his front gate.

Every ounce of his contempt was an ounce of his guard lowered.

If I had corrected him — if I had insisted, over the years, that he see me and my family accurately — I would have traded the enormous advantage of his blindness for the hollow satisfaction of his acknowledgment, and he would have been careful, and I would have caught nothing.

So I said nothing.