“Thank you, Clara,” my father said, giving her a polite nod.

We rode the glass elevator to the top floor in silence.

His office had been cleaned, the dust cleared from the heavy mahogany desk.

A stack of folders sat in the center of the dark wood next to a gold fountain pen.

My father sat in his leather chair, looking around the spacious room.

He looked different in his dark suit, yet his hands were still rough and calloused from years of physical work.

He picked up the first folder, which was labeled *Asset Recovery and Restructuring*.

“The Collins family assets are frozen,” he said, looking at the documents.

“The court will liquidate their properties to pay back what they stole from the firm.”

“Will that be enough to cover the losses?” I asked, sitting in the chair opposite him.

“Most of it,” he said, turning a page.

“But the company is strong enough to absorb the rest. We will survive this.”

He opened the next folder and slid it across the desk toward me.

It contained a set of documents from a local trust company.