Everything’s perfectly legal.” That was their first mistake — believing that paper was the same thing as power.

Their second was already scheduled.

Chapter 13 — The Celebration

They had planned a formal dinner for that Friday, to celebrate what they were calling the corporate restructuring.

They invited local investors, estate lawyers, cousins, my late father’s old business partners — a whole room of the people whose good opinion my mother had spent her life collecting.

She wanted applause.