Brody gives his son-in-law a chiding look. “Patience, Randall. We’ve got a few minutes before the packages arrive. The problem is that Ms. Masters doesn’t really understand the stakes. And I know why.” He walks very close to Caitlin, then circles slowly around her, missing nothing. “You have my congratulations, Cage. I’d plow this filly all day long just to watch her walk.”

His crude words are all the more startling for the civility that preceded them. “What do you think, Randall?”

Regan looks up from his screen and tilts his head to one side. “A little skinny, but still prime.”

Caitlin’s face goes red, and she looks away from both men.

“You can’t fake that haughtiness,” Royal says with an appreciative smile. “Raised with a silver spoon, this one. Thinks the world has rules, and that her job is to make people abide by them. Except herself, of course. And what she most wants … is to be a star. But she wouldn’t even have the chance, if Daddy didn’t own the company.”

“And you?” she flashes back. “You’re richer than my father ever was.”

Brody barks a laugh. “You really don’t know anything, do you? I met your father once. At the Kentucky Derby. The second I heard him speak, I knew he came from money. And you’re his pride and joy, aren’t you.”

“I hope so.” Pink blotches have come up on her throat.

The old man glances at his watch, then looks at her with startling intensity. “My story’s a little different, princess. My mother died when I was just a tot. We were living on the levee after the Great Flood. The only dry land for fifty miles around. My father was out in a boat, helping rescue trapper families from the marshes. Everybody on the levee was starving, black and white both. One morning, a huge hog swam by. It was eating a bloated old nigra woman. I’ll never forget that sight, so long as I live. Most of the bodies floating past were nigras. They never learned to swim, see? Lots of them still don’t. Anyway, a National Guardsman shot the hog, and two men jumped into the water to get it. They shoved the woman’s corpse away with a pole and dragged the hog back. They gutted it right quick, then strung it up and built a fire under it. But the people were so hungry … they couldn’t wait.”

Royal lowers his voice, and his eyes grow remote. “We were ripping meat off that hog long before it was cooked. I wasn’t much more than a baby, so I was grabbing from down low, where I could reach. The meat I got was cooked, I guess. But Mama pulled hers from higher up, where it was almost raw. I got sick, but I lived. Mama died in agony, five weeks later. Worms in her brain.”