That is a much rarer thing, and a much safer one, and I intend to keep it for the rest of my life.

There was one last piece of truth still coming, and it was Rachel who brought it: a copy of an irrevocable trust our late father had created years before he died, with our mother named as trustee.

Our father, it turned out, had seen something in Victor early, and had moved to protect us — locking a reserve of family assets, shares in a transport firm, into a trust that named only Rachel and me, which Victor could never touch.

When the state unwound the shell companies Victor had built in my name, those real assets reverted to our father’s trust.