Chapter 1
Eighteen million dollars.
The number echoed in the quiet, climate-controlled cabin of my Lexus as I drove through the familiar, rain-slicked streets of Portland. Eighteen million dollars. It wasn’t just a number; it was the physical manifestation of thirty-two years of my life. It was the late nights hunched over spreadsheets when the software kept crashing. It was the agonizing decisions to miss Sarah’s middle school soccer games because a pipe had burst in a commercial property I managed. It was the terrifying leap of faith I took at thirty years old, taking out a second mortgage to start a property management firm in a cramped, windowless office above a dry cleaner.
And an hour ago, with the stroke of a heavy Montblanc pen across a stack of thick legal paper, that company belonged to someone else. The wire transfer was pending. The escrow was funded. The war was over, and I had won.
