Another investment group will have to make that call.” It was not revenge.

It was the coldest and most reasonable thing in the world: a man declining to hand two hundred million dollars to people who had just shown him, unprompted, exactly what they were.

Chapter 13 — The Warm Paternal Voice

My sister burst into tears, turning on Spencer.

“Tell me this isn’t happening!

Tell me our wedding isn’t built on a lie!” Spencer had no answer.

And my mother walked slowly over to me, and for the first time in my entire life, the habitual contempt on her face was gone, replaced by something I had never once seen there directed at me: fear.