I have watched a great many people, in my professional life, discover the difference between the power they feel and the power they actually hold.

It is one of the most reliable patterns in all of financial crime: people who have never been checked come to believe they cannot be, and they build their whole confidence on that belief, and the belief is a fiction.

Wendy and Luca had spent years feeling powerful — the money, the estate, the country club, the family name, the deference of everyone around them.

And none of it was real power, in the end.