The penthouse was a war room disguised as a sanctuary. Forty-seven floors above the chaos of Manhattan, the silence was absolute, broken only by the whisper of the climate control and the low hum of the secure servers my team had installed. Grief was a luxury I had processed and packed away in the frantic, silent hours of my departure. Vengeance, I was learning, was a far more clarifying, more energizing pursuit.
My new publicist, a notoriously ruthless woman named Lena with eyes that could strip paint, held a tablet up for my review. On it was a live feed from the White House Press Briefing Room. A replay of Marcus’s performance. His face, etched with a furrowed brow of manufactured concern, filled the screen. He spoke of my ‘collapse,’ his voice a symphony of feigned sorrow. He was magn
