I don’t regret it.

The negotiation took four months.

The thing that ended it was not a legal argument.

It was Arthur.

In the eleventh week, Luca’s attorney was still fighting on Alder, and Luca had told his parents that I was “taking him for everything,” and had apparently said it in a way that suggested a version of events in which the spreadsheet had come before the motel.

Arthur Aldarossi drove to his son’s office on a Tuesday afternoon, which he had never done in his life, and sat in his car in the lot until Luca came out, and had a conversation with him that I know the contents of because Arthur told me about it, once, three years later, at a graduation.