At the Vale family's anniversary gala, my oldest friend's descendant called me a freeloader in front of the people who kept his company alive. He had no idea that the tower where he planned to make his fortune stood on land I had owned for generations, or that the lease giving his family the right to build there was about to expire. I had once handed a penniless orphan the money to buy his first horse. Six hundred years later, his descendants had mistaken my patience for dependence. I could make them pay for that mistake. The harder question was whether I could protect the people who worked for them without saving the family that had forgotten who I was.