“For a moment, Poldo’s mind flashed back to when he was a young boy in his family workshop, when his father had sat him down and told him that if nothing else, he could take pride in being a good person. Since then, he’d discovered that being a good person was the last resort of self-esteem.

In the upper echelons of Andarun’s financial industry, people prided themselves on the name of the firm they worked for, the size of the deals they closed, the title on their business card, and anything else that could be quickly boiled down to a sum of gold. With so much to take pride in beyond integrity, many bankers put little stock in it.”