Whenever I came in with a glass of milk or a plate of fruit, he’d snap the lid shut or close his tabs in a hurry, and I had assumed — the way you do — that he was gaming, or embarrassed about something, or just twelve.

Now each of those moments felt like an alarm I’d walked straight past.

And Lachlan, in his home office, dropping his voice, ending calls the instant I passed the door, going tight and irritable whenever I asked the mildest question about his firm.

His private investment company over in Grandview Heights had always been a fog to me, all international private funds and offshore structures, terms that meant nothing and were designed to.

Whenever I’d tried to understand it, he’d wave me off. You don’t understand high-level business, Vesper. For the first time in my life, I badly needed to understand it.

And here is what shames me still, turning those months over: I had seen all of it, in real time, and explained every piece of it away.