They lived their entire lives at the top of the structure, in the visible, comfortable, admired part: the penthouse, the parties, the pearls, the deference of relatives, the whole gleaming apparatus of a prosperous family.

And because they lived at the top, they came to believe that the top was where the power was — that the person with the important title and the velvet armchair and the microphone was the one who mattered, and the quiet woman paying the bills somewhere below was simply the help.

It is the oldest error there is, and it is fatal, and I have watched powerful people make it my whole career.

They forget that a structure does not rest on its penthouse.

It rests on its foundation.

The foundation is invisible, and unglamorous, and buried out of sight, and it is the only thing holding the entire weight of everything above it.