“Alexander, what on earth are you doing?” Damian demanded, gripping the edge of the table.

“We have twenty investors waiting downstairs right now.”

I took my wool coat off the rack and looked him in the eye.

“My son was just born,” I said.

And nobody in that room dared to say another word as I walked out the door.

I want to mark that moment, because it was the first genuine choice I had made in years that was not about the business — the first time in longer than I could remember that I had heard the words money and son in the same minute and not had to think, even for a second, about which one I would stand up for.

A better man would not have needed the contrast to know himself.