My father had recently retired as a senior partner from a regional accounting firm, which meant that when I needed the right person, he knew exactly who to call.

The man he reached was Everett Brennan, a commercial litigation attorney who had built his practice on financial misconduct — the quiet, document-heavy kind that ruins people far more thoroughly than anything loud ever could.

On the twenty-ninth of December, I sat across from him at my parents’ dining room table while he read through my folder in complete silence.

He was not a man who filled a room with reassurance.

He read, and he read, and then he set the pages down and looked up.