Not because I was nervous.
Because I wanted to remember.
At sixteen, I had stood on a dark street with a garbage bag and one leg, wondering what I had done to make my parents stop loving me.
For years, part of me believed success would someday prove them wrong.
If I became rich enough.
Powerful enough.
Successful enough.
Maybe I could show them I had value.
Standing there at thirty-five, I finally understood something.
I had nothing to prove to them.
I wore a custom midnight-blue suit.
The left trouser leg was tailored slightly higher than the right, leaving part of my titanium prosthesis visible.
I wasn’t hiding it.
Not anymore.
The Montalvo estate was enormous.
Crystal chandeliers.
Luxury vehicles filling the drive.
Hundreds of guests moving through a ballroom that probably cost more to decorate for one evening than most people earned in a decade.
This was the world my parents had worshipped.
