I had funded Vance’s earliest opportunities through Sterling.
Approved continued credit after missed targets.
Covered family obligations.
Allowed Julian to tell the world a cleaner story about his independence because I thought love might be more honest if he did not know how much power my name carried.
That experiment had failed.
Not because Julian discovered I was wealthy and became greedy.
Because he never discovered it at all.
He simply became entitled to a life he assumed existed because of him.
That was harder to admit.
Sometimes betrayal is easier to understand when money explains it.
Mine did not.
Julian underestimated me before he knew what I owned.
He dismissed me when he believed I owned nothing.
He prepared documents questioning my competence while depending on money he did not know came through my decisions.
The ownership revelation had not created his character.
It merely exposed how badly he had read mine.
I rinsed the mug.
Dried it.