"I won't always be like this," he said.
Victoria tilted her head.
'Like what?'
'Poor.'
It was so shocking to hear a little girl say that she burst out laughing prematurely.
She blushed, but carried on.
"I'll be back," he said.
'I'll come back when I'm rich and I'll marry you.'
Then he laughed even harder, not because he was cruel, but because children often promise impossible things in the same tone that adults reserve for weather reports.
Then, still smiling, she untied the red ribbon from one of her braids, tore it in half with her teeth and hands, tied a piece around her wrist and curled her fingers around it.
—Don't forget it, then—she said.
He didn't.
Twenty-two years later, Isaiah's company, Mitchell Urban Holdings, was valued at forty-seven million dollars.
Business magazines described him as disciplined, visionary, and instinctive.
Her partner, Richard Sloan, considered it impossible.
Employees described him as fair, demanding, and inscrutable.
He had amassed his fortune through remodeling and strategic acquisitions, the kind of work that turned abandoned land into attractive information brochures and old bricks into language understandable to investors.
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