I. The Illusion of the Prince
The hills of Greenwich, Connecticut, have a specific way of smelling in the autumn: a mixture of damp earth, burning maple, and the suffocating scent of old money. But the mansion at 144 Ridgeview smelled only of pretension and expensive catering. It was a $3.5 million sprawling estate of glass and limestone, a house meant to announce to the world that the Miller family had finally arrived.
I stood in the corner of the grand foyer, holding the hand of my six-year-old son, Leo. I am Davina Miller, though in this house, I was simply “the sister who does computers.” For a decade, I had carefully cultivated a facade of modest success. To my parents, I was a high-level technician who “maintained servers”—a job they viewed with the same disdain one might reserve for a plumber. I let them believe it. Privacy is the ultimate luxury, and I preferred the quiet power of my venture capital firm, Miller Holdings, to the loud, empty clamor of status.
