I'd been driving for forty-five fucking minutes.
Forty-five minutes of LA traffic—where your soul ages a year per red light—billboards screaming about my own success like the city had decided to become my unsolicited hype man, and mental math so aggressive my brain was filing a formal complaint.
The AMG One purred through the streets like it knew it was expensive enough to ignore traffic laws, and I sat there trying to reconcile the fact that Liberation Holdings was flirting with a trillion dollars while I was somehow still the poorest person in my own romantic ecosystem.
Charlotte: $1.7 trillion.
Madison: $237.6 billion.
Me: $52.5 billion and a really nice car.
The hierarchy was clear.
I was the emotional support billionaire. The guy you pat on the head and reassure while standing on a pile of money taller than Mount Everest.
