Greed was less a deadly sin than family creed, as inescapable as the name he bore or the way he recognized his father’s gestures in his own hands. He swore he was different from his cousins, his uncles, his grandfather. His greed was different. It buried him in tomes and equations and experiments, for it was a lust for knowledge that drove him to seek more. It was a noble greed. But that much silver…
