It had all come crashing down, and Tulio’s recent days had been spent mostly behind the high walls of his heavily guarded compound on a leafy Beverly Hills cul-de-sac. Although he had plenty left, the $50 million earmarked for USC was mostly gone, spent on an armada of $4,750-an-hour lawyers who had negotiated the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission to a draw. Tulio had paid a mammoth fine and was barred from ever again working in the securities business, but he would escape prison. A master dealmaker, Tulio viewed this one as a home run, knowing that other disgraced financiers had rehabilitated themselves in the public eye by establishing foundations and scattering hefty donations among the right charities. Money always talked.

The luncheon at the tony Players Lounge restaurant in Beverly Hills was intended to be a victory celebration. Tulio had gathered those of his friends who would still be seen with him in public to tell them his long nightmare was over. “I kicked those cocksuckers’ asses,” he said, and the men around the table nodded and smiled, knowing he was right. A plumber’s son who had spent decades building Gibraltar Securities into one of the nation’s largest stock brokerage firms, Tulio was above all a survivor.

And then he wasn’t. Tulio at first felt like he had been punched hard in his back. He looked down at his silk shirt, where a bright red rose was blossoming from an exit wound over his heart.  He stared at it, confused about what he was seeing. He felt light-headed, his eyes losing focus on the scene around him. He tried to speak, but only a low grunt came out.

It would take Tulio about a minute to die, his brain starved of oxygen, but it was just long enough for him to realize what had happened to him. His omnipresent bodyguards had leapt forward when their boss was hit, but there was nothing to be done. They had recognized the patio table as exposed, but Tulio had insisted not just on celebrating but on being seen celebrating. The nearest guard, a hulking Special Forces veteran, knew instantly it had been a sniper. As screams rose around him, he reached for his phone to summon an ambulance, but he knew it was useless. There would be angry recriminations from his superiors, hours of police questions and red tape, but this job was over.

Although few would mourn Tulio, his death would later be remembered as signaling the start of a new and ominous era in America. Class warfare was no longer an abstract topic of editorial pages and talk shows, the cross-hairs once featured in right-wing campaign ads had come to rest on new targets, and in myriad other ways no one could yet fathom, things would never be the same.