PART 1
“If you don’t kneel down and apologize to Sabrina, I’ll kick you out of my house tonight,” Brendan Alcott said in front of almost 300 guests, with a glass of champagne in his hand and the confidence of a man convinced that everything around him belonged to him.
The private lounge of a luxury hotel on Grand Avenue in San Diego was celebrating his five years as CEO of Pinnacle Enterprises, one of the most powerful real estate developers in the country. Businesspeople, retired officials, foreign partners, and executives toasted him under enormous crystal chandeliers.
I, Sydney McCann, his wife of ten years, stood by a column, wearing a simple black dress that my mother-in-law, Claire, had called secretary attire. For a decade, I had accepted being left out of photographs, hearing that Brendan was the sole provider, and smiling when his relatives hinted that I was lucky to have married him.
