He let go of his mother’s hand and turned his head back to look at me, thirteen years old, studying the sweating, trembling billionaire — and he did not sneer, and he did not speak.

He simply looked at me, gave a slow, minute shake of his head, a gesture of profound and final pity, and turned back around.

That small shake of the head was a steel vault swinging shut.

It was the verdict.

And I stood paralyzed as the glass doors slid open and swallowed the mother and my sons into the night, a gust of cold air chilling the sweat on my neck, and understood that I had spent my whole life building an empire of dust, and the wind had just carried it away.

Chapter 7 — The Collapse of the Empire