That is why he ranked Chloe against me, and me against everyone.

In his economy, my smallness was the price of his largeness; every ounce of dignity he stripped from me was an ounce he got to keep.

It is a bleak and airless way to see the world, and it is the source of most of the ordinary cruelty there is.

And the reason I redirected his company toward building homes rather than simply seizing his fortune is that I wanted to refute the premise itself, in public, with the very instrument he had built on it.

Because worth is not finite.