A woman on my arm who fed my ego with the steady precision of an IV drip.

So why, I thought, listening to the ice shift in my glass, does my chest feel like an empty room?

The truth was a pill I had swallowed dry for over a decade: money can buy submission, but it cannot buy one hour of peace.

My life was a piece of theater.

Delphine loved being a billionaire’s wife — the credit limits, the envious stares.

Auberon called me Roderick with a stutter of fear.