They had never learned to be careful because they had never needed to be.

When the day came that they did need to be, they had no idea how, and the machinery of the law, slow and patient and unimpressed by old money, closed over them exactly as it closes over everyone who finally, at last, is made to answer.

Chapter 28 — The Deposition

During his deposition my father sat across from me in a cold room, stripped of the custom suits and the high-priced public-relations team.

“I did it for the family name, Evander,” he said, his voice weak and trembling.

“I did it to preserve everything we built.”