This was my grandson’s wedding. A million-dollar affair for a two-cent romance.

My name is Rose Sterling. To the world, and specifically to the bride, I am merely “Grandma Rose”—a withered, eighty-year-old relic in a wheelchair, draped in gray silk, clutching a cane like a lifeline. They think my hearing is going. They think my mind is softening like an overripe peach. They think I am harmless.

They forget that I am the one who built the Sterling Trust. They forget that every diamond on the bride’s finger, every crystal in the chandeliers above, and the very champagne they are guzzling was paid for by the ink of my signature.