PART 1: The Stage at Harvard
The heavy mahogany doors of Sanders Theatre swung open to a burst of afternoon light that made the dust motes look like falling ash.
I stood beside the fourth-row aisle, holding the wooden handrail as twelve hundred people rose to their feet in a deafening wave of applause.
On the elevated stage beneath the crimson banners, my eighteen-year-old son, Noah, held the brass seal of the Conant Academic Fellowship against his chest.
His tailored navy blazer sat squarely on his broad shoulders, framing the unmistakable sharp line of an aristocratic Italian jawline I had spent two decades trying to forget.
Advertisement
In the center of the third row, barely twenty feet from where I stood, sat Vincent Moretti, the undisputed titan of Chicago’s private equity empire.
His silver-streaked dark hair caught the stage glow, his immaculate charcoal Brioni suit radiating the terrifying, absolute authority that had once ruled my life.
