None of them, in the end, went to prison for hurting me, because they had been too careful for that — no bruise, no blow, nothing a body could show a jury.

They went to prison for the money.

Charles Mercer was charged as the architect he was: two decades of wire fraud, money laundering, breach of fiduciary duty, and the systematic theft of a fortune he had been trusted to protect.

Nathan was charged with conspiracy, fraud, forgery, and coercion — for the forged power of attorney, for the scheme to have me declared incompetent, for riding his hand into my father’s trust on the back of Charles’s larger crime.

Eleanor, who had believed that being a mother granted her the right to help break another woman, was charged for her role in the conspiracy to defraud and coerce me.