A moment that allowed me to approach a wealthy stranger.

Now I noticed because I wanted to make sure he was comfortable.

I wasn’t going to pretend that meant money had stopped mattering.

It hadn’t.

But something else mattered too.

The man beneath the fortune.

The difficult, proud, frightened, sometimes generous man who had spent years testing other people’s motives while refusing to examine his own.

I looked toward the mansion.

It was still magnificent.

Still expensive.