I looked at the man who had dictated every choice of my life, who had taught me that wealth was the only measure of a man’s worth.

“You didn’t build a legacy, Dad,” I said, and my voice was completely steady.

“You built a prison.

And you sacrificed everyone who ever loved you to keep the doors locked.”

He did not understand what I meant, and I could see that he never would, and that was the most frightening thing about him.

My father had spent seventy years accumulating — money, influence, land, a son shaped to his specifications — and he had genuinely believed, right up until the federal agents came through his door, that the accumulating was the point of a life.