It was, I understood only later, the single decent thing Denton Ashgrave did in the whole arc of this story until the very end — and even it was compromised, because he had known for a day that his family meant to strip me and had let me walk into their trap before producing the one document that could stop it.

But he produced it.

Whatever rot was in that old man, some ember of the father who had actually loved his son had survived, enough that he could not sit and watch Porter’s last wishes torn up at his own dinner table.

I would learn the shape of his guilt more fully in the weeks ahead — that he had wanted to confess, that he had summoned me that first night meaning to, that Dax had steered him off it every time.

But in that dining room he did the thing his fear usually stopped him from doing.