Even as laughter echoed through the kitchen—echoed off cracked tiles and mismatched chairs that had quietly borne witness to a decade of careful budgeting and unspoken sacrifices—part of my mind had already drifted. Not away from them. Never from them. But forward. Into a future so wide and sharp-edged it felt like staring at a sunrise through broken glass.
I had given them relief. That was undeniable. But relief was only the beginning.
Because money, real money, doesn't just buy comfort. It buys momentum. It buys silence in rooms where power speaks in whispers.
It buys choices.
I could feel it pulsing beneath my skin, the system's gift and the raw capital it had earned me merging into something alive. Something with teeth. The kind of power you don't flaunt—you architect with it. You build cathedrals no one knows you designed, influence disguised as inevitability.
