Three years earlier, on a wet Tuesday morning while the rest of the house still slept under expensive comforters and curated delusions, I drove my rusted 2005 Toyota Corolla across San Diego to the offices of Bennett & Rowe, one of the most expensive law firms in the city. I paid a fifty-thousand-dollar retainer in cash—money I had scraped together over years of overtime, side jobs, and disciplined silence—and I told them exactly what I wanted.
“I need a blind trust,” I said. “Completely anonymous. I want my name buried so deep it would take a team of auditors and a court order to drag it into daylight. And I want every legal protection available to keep me invisible.”
The attorney across from me was a silver-haired woman named Victoria Bennett. Her desk was polished mahogany, her office all leather and books and quiet old money. I was sitting there in my janitor’s uniform, smelling faintly of bleach, floor wax, and stale coffee.
To her credit, she didn’t blink.
“May I ask why the secrecy, Mr. Carter?” she said.
I looked down at my hands, dry and rough from industrial cleaner and paper towels and work no one notices unless you stop doing it.