Patrick had pulled my foster record only three weeks after that loan went into default warning status.

“He needed leverage,” Arthur said quietly.

“He was on the verge of losing his whole company to Vanguard Global.”

I took a yellow plastic pen off the desk and rolled it between my fingers.

The café where we met was exactly two blocks from my old foster placement office.

He’d spilled his expensive iced coffee on my winter coat deliberately.

He paid for my dry cleaning, invited me to a fancy dinner and told me he knew what it was like to build a life from nothing at all.