15.
THE FIRST OF NOVEMBER, 2017, New York City, late morning, forty-four stories above the ground, the rush of Sixth Avenue traffic was audible in the offices of Stewart Baines. Brashner brooded at his desk. The Larkin woman had been impertinent to challenge him the day before. He looked at her picture on her firm’s website. She was pretty, in a provocative way. He undressed her in his imagination. She’d insulted him. He was still angry, which made him want to f**k her even more.
Patrick Brashner was born in Queens, but his family moved to a brownstone on West Ninety-First Street when his father, a successful dressmaker for affluent women on the Upper East Side, opened a*****e on Madison Avenue. His three older sisters entertained themselves by making him wear dresses until he was old en
