Asset-freezing orders.

Business partners publicly severing ties.

Former accountants and assistants cutting plea deals to save themselves, adding fake invoices and unreported income and tax evasion to the growing indictment.

My mother tried, at the last, to claim she had been merely a submissive wife who signed whatever my father put in front of her.

That defense collapsed within forty-eight hours, because the prosecutors produced hundreds of emails written by Patricia herself, directing wire transfers, instructing accountants to hide specific payouts, asking whether certain transactions could be completed without appearing on the family’s annual trust summaries.

She had not been a passive victim.