He came within twenty minutes.
I heard him before I saw him, the particular sound of Adrian moving through a building
he owns, purposeful without being loud, the kind of presence that registers in a room
before the person arrives. He pushed open the conference room door and looked at me
across the table, and whatever was on my face told him immediately that this was not a
routine matter because he closed the door behind him without being asked and sat down.
“Show me,” he said.
I turned my laptop toward him and pulled up the EB Holdings documentation in the sequence
I had traced it. The fund itself first, its six-year performance record, its consistent management,
the quiet profitability of something that had been tended carefully and without attention. Then
the registration docum
