My husband had spent years warning me never to set foot on that farm. So after he passed away and the lawyer handed me the key, saying that from now on the place belonged to me, I was ready to sell it right away and put everything behind me. But before making my final decision, I still wanted to see it once for myself. When the door opened, I finally understood why, all those years, he had never wanted me to set foot there.

Inside were selected pieces from Joshua’s files. Not everything. Not enough to create spectacle. Just enough to establish pattern. Fraud. Misrepresentation. Prior misconduct. Enough to contaminate credibility. Enough to make any corporate actor in the room suddenly reassess who had brought him into this conversation and why.

Allan opened his envelope and read with the expression of a man watching a ceiling crack above him.

“These are private family matters,” he said.

“On the contrary,” I said, “they are directly relevant to whether anyone at this table should treat you as honest brokers.”

Robert’s face darkened. “What do you want?”

I did not answer immediately.

I looked at him. At all of them. At the brothers who had spent years becoming the kind of men Joshua had prepared against. At my daughter, sitting straighter than she had all week. At the rival oil executives. At Maren, calm and impossible to rattle. At the map of the western reserve glowing on the wall like a buried accusation.