The tragedy was not that they had underestimated me.

The tragedy was that only a man’s fortune, and not thirty years of my own achievement, had been able to change their minds — which told me, with perfect clarity, exactly what they respected, and exactly what they did not.

Chapter 15 — Three Hundred and Twenty Million

At that exact moment, my phone vibrated in my clutch.

Then again.

And again.

I pulled it out.