The estate in Greenwich was built to be a fortress of wealth.

That night it felt like a mausoleum.

I did not wait for the driver; the moment the car stopped I was out, past the alarmed night staff, into my mahogany-paneled study, and I threw the doors shut and locked them.

I poured three fingers of scotch and swallowed it like medicine, and it burned my throat and did nothing at all for the freezing void in my chest.

I looked around that study — the room where I had closed the deals that built the empire, paneled in wood older than the country, lined with first editions I had bought by the yard and never read — and for the first time I saw it clearly, as a stranger might.