I started over, and I started with very little, and it was the best decision I have ever made.

I used what was truly mine and truly clean — my own reputation, slowly rebuilt; my own expertise, which no one had ever been able to drug out of me; the relationships with people who had believed me when the whispers said I was cracking.

I started a small advisory firm, my name on the door and nothing hidden behind it, and I did honest work for people who needed it, and the work was smaller and quieter and infinitely better than anything I had done inside my grandfather’s tower.

I did not miss the marble.

I did not miss the legacy.

A legacy, I had learned, is only worth carrying if you can carry it in the daylight, and mine, it turned out, could not, so I set it down and built something I could.