And I want to be careful here, because I do not want to make it sound as though I spent seven years as a mastermind, patiently plotting my family’s ruin behind a placid face.

That is not what happened, and it would flatter me.

For most of those years I was not building a case against anyone.

I was just a careful person, doing careful things, out of instincts I did not fully examine — keeping my own attorney, keeping my inheritance structured separately, registering the trademarks properly because doing things properly is simply how I am made, installing a camera when my house began to feel wrong.

None of it was a plan.

It was a temperament.