There was only the immense, empowering, beautiful weightlessness of absolute safety, generational wealth, and fierce maternal protection.

My mother, Victoria, sat in a lounge chair nearby, sipping a glass of iced tea, watching her grandson with a soft, genuine smile the corporate world rarely saw.

I picked up a heavy gold pen and signed the final, expedited divorce decree on the glass patio table.

I was completely, blissfully unbothered by the fact that earlier that morning, a pathetic, multi-page, tear-stained begging letter from Mark had arrived in my mailbox, sent from the federal penitentiary, pleading for forgiveness and a chance to “be a father.”

It was a letter I had immediately, without reading a single word, dropped directly into the heavy-duty industrial paper shredder in my home office.

Chapter 6: The Unbreakable Foundation

Exactly two years later.