What she would not have, if I fell apart now, was a life at all.

Chapter 3 — Everything Transfers Cleanly

“Once she’s gone,” Beckett said, in the same easy tone, “everything comes to me.

No probate fight, no complications.

Just me.”

Everything.

My late grandfather had left me a commercial real estate firm worth close to twelve million dollars, and the family trust that held it, which I had managed since his death.

For seven years Beckett had played the role of a man to whom money meant nothing — a modest, contented associate architect, faintly amused by my family’s wealth, forever waving off any suggestion that it mattered to him.