Their phones were ringing — their parents calling, the parents themselves now facing the first federal questions of their own lives, the empires cracking in real time as investigators followed the trails all the way up.

And Chad Kensington, when he saw me standing back by the agents’ vehicles, twisted around and shouted the words I had known he would shout, because they were the only words men like him have ever needed.

“Do you know who my father is?

Do you have any idea what my family is going to do to you?”

I walked over to him, and I crouched down so that we were level, and I looked at him — not with the cold gaze of the man I used to be, but with something quieter and more final.

“I know precisely who your father is,” I said.