He believed it.

In the moment he said it, panicking at the foot of a stage while his empire dissolved on the screens behind me, Ferdinand genuinely felt love, and what he felt love for was the thing he was losing.

But that is not love for a person.

That is grief for a possession.

He had never, in eight years, been curious about my inner life, never asked what I thought or feared or wanted, never noticed the fund I ran or the mind that ran it.

He had loved me the way a man loves a house he’s comfortable in — really, warmly, but entirely for what it provided him.