As our court-appointed guardian, Roland would then gain full legal control of our father’s estate the instant it unlocked.

I will not detail the forgeries or the mechanics of the scheme, because the point is not how it was done but that it was done: that two adults had constructed, on paper, a quiet legal machine to strip two teenage girls of their personhood and their inheritance in a single stroke, timed to the day.

And there was one more document.

A dual life insurance policy, taken out on both of us six months earlier, its beneficiary a holding company controlled entirely by Roland.