Vincent laid the next page down slowly, as if he understood it would change everything. “Because,” he said, “your husband’s trust is the reason Radiant Glow exists. Every dollar of startup capital, the launch, the first year of operations, all of it came from a loan structured through the Sheffield Trust. Marlowe never secured outside investors. She has been building her company on Walter’s money the entire time.” I sat very still, the air conditioner humming in the silence. The woman who had banished me from my own dinner table to discuss her business had been financed, from the first day, by the very family she treated as beneath her.

I read the loan terms twice. The trust held the note. That meant the loan could be called, restructured, or withdrawn entirely, at the discretion of one person. The sole trustee. Me. “Vincent,” I said, and my voice did not shake, “walk me through exactly what authority I have over this loan.” He almost smiled. He turned to a tabbed page he had clearly prepared before I arrived, and for the first time in three years, I felt the ground shift back beneath my own feet.