Richard winced slightly, the memory of his own condescension clearly landing somewhere uncomfortable.
“And the wealthy investors I pitched to back then,” I continued, “looked at me exactly the way you looked at me today. Most of them didn’t give me a second glance. But a few people — a very few — looked past what I wore, past what I drove, and actually listened to my ideas. They took a genuine chance on someone who looked like nothing on paper. And I never once forgot them.”
“What happened to them?” Christopher asked quietly.
“When I made my first million, I paid every one of them back tenfold. Not because I had to. Because they’d seen the person in front of them instead of the packaging around him.”
“We should have seen that today,” Patricia said. “With Michael. We should have seen what actually matters.”
“Jessica did,” I pointed out. “Your daughter has far better judgment than either of you managed to show at this table.”
