Chapter 8 — The Invisible Foundation

Here is the thing none of them knew.

The humble apartment over the print shop, the one Ferdinand loved to bring up as proof of where he’d rescued me from, had in fact been the first property my grandmother, Emmeline Kingswell, ever bought — a woman who started by selling fabric at a market stall and ended by building one of the most formidable private investment funds in the country.

I inherited controlling interest at twenty-nine, and I chose to keep it private, because I wanted, just once in my life, to be loved for myself, with no bank balance and no powerful name sitting between me and the person who claimed to love me.

My grandmother would have understood the impulse, and she would have warned me against it.

Emmeline Kingswell had spent her whole life being underestimated — a woman selling fabric who dared to think she could move capital, in an era when the men in the banks she eventually outgrew wouldn’t shake her hand.