I never went to that dinner intending to destroy my family. I went because my grandfather had asked me to protect what he built, after fifteen years of being pushed away from it. When my father threw that bill at me in front of seventeen people, something inside me finally decided that his request would be honored right there, in front of everyone who had laughed. Eight months after the settlement, Marguerite called—not to apologize, but to ask whether I had known everything before that night. I told her the truth: I expected fraud, but the scale of it surprised me. She said she had not known about the surgery record and had trusted Dad’s explanation. I believed part of that, and suspected the rest was a story she needed to live with. We have not spoken since.

My aunt and two cousins still send birthday cards, while the rest of the family has divided along lines I never intended to create. The company is now run by professional management while the board restructures, and I remain a twenty-percent shareholder. I don’t run the business anymore. I simply check the numbers once every quarter. Sometimes I wonder what my grandfather would think of all of it. Then I remember how much he loved expensive restaurants and how he would have eaten the Wagyu without the slightest guilt. He probably would have found the whole dinner very funny.