Cunning. Intelligent. Diligent. Ruthless. Social climber. Protagonist. Suggest me a book with a main character like this.

Key is for the person be rags to riches, and I also not interested in stories where character ends up saying, "what I have done?". Instead, they believe themselves fully justified and they trick us into being so too, only to look back and say, "wait a minute, I went along with WHAT" a few [...]