I felt the cold weight of the paper that could end me.

And I felt, rising underneath both, the thing I had felt standing at my mother’s bedroom door and had run away from — the understanding of exactly what my life had become.

I had an army of men who would kill on my word.

I had a vault holding more money than I could spend in three lifetimes.

I had a name that made grown men go quiet when I entered a room.

And when my mother was crying in a wheelchair, losing the last of her hair to a disease that was taking her by inches, the only person in the entire world who had cared enough to kneel beside her and hold her hand was the sister I had summoned to my office to threaten.