I spent two years assembling that case, and eleven days on the witness stand, and when it was over I understood something that shaped the rest of my life: that the people who prey on the vulnerable count, above all, on not being taken seriously — on the widow being dismissed, the pensioner ignored, the old woman assumed to be confused.

The whole machinery of that kind of theft runs on the victim being underestimated.

So I built a firm around the opposite premise.

For thirty years, Pendleton Fiduciary took the cases nobody else would — the stolen inheritances, the rigged guardianships, the quiet liquidation of people too old or too tired or too alone to fight back.

I had sat across from a great many Sheldons and a great many Blanches.

I simply had never expected to raise one.