I bought it because it was a sound acquisition — undervalued paper attached to real assets held by an overleveraged borrower who had stopped paying, which is, quite simply, my business.

Vantage buys the debts that other people have given up on and, usually, restructures them.

That is the work.

That the borrower happened to be my boyfriend’s father was, when I authorized the purchase, a coincidence I intended to manage discreetly, at arm’s length, the way a professional does.

I had, in fact, gone back and forth about whether to buy it at all, precisely because of the coincidence.

There is a version of me — the careful, conflict-avoiding version who had spent eight months letting Theodora correct her posture — who passed on the deal entirely, who told her analysts to find another distressed borrower and kept her personal life and her portfolio in separate rooms.