A skill I’d developed to make up for my reading trouble had turned into something else entirely. Grandma Genevieve had taught me this.

During those Sunday afternoons at her apartment, she’d spread out old contracts from the company’s early days and shown me how to read them—not word by word, but as systems, as structures.

“Your father reads contracts like a lawyer,” she told me once in 2019, just before her health began to slip.

“He looks for what he can exploit for himself. You read them like an architect. You see how all the pieces connect.”

That same day, she handed me a small wooden box. It was mahogany, with brass hinges.

“Keep this safe,” she said seriously. “Don’t open it yet.”