Marcus was a highly respected, self-made millionaire. He owned three successful companies in the city: a massive construction firm that built glittering office towers, a transport company with an entire fleet of trucks, and a fast-growing technology business that had investors knocking down his door. He employed hundreds of people, bank managers answered his calls on the first ring, and local government officials shook his hand with absolute respect.
But Marcus had not started life with power; he had started with crushing poverty.
Standing in the shadow of his own mansion, listening to his wife’s cruel voice echoing from the patio, Marcus was suddenly transported back to his childhood. He grew up in a cramped, freezing two-room apartment on the east side of the city, where the walls were paper-thin, the pipes were incredibly unreliable, and hot water came only when it pleased. The one window they had that caught any sunlight faced the depressing gray wall of another building. After his father died suddenly when Marcus was only six, the world became significantly colder. The only warmth left in it was his mother, the woman who had gone without so he could have a future.
