THE FRAME BUILDS
Vanessa Cross did not believe in luck. She believed in preparation, in patience, in the meticulous construction of circumstances that produced outcomes indistinguishable from fortune. Her father had believed in luck, in the benevolent universe that rewarded good engineering and honest business. He had died bankrupt, his patents shelved, his company disassembled by Damien Blackwood's father with the efficiency of a surgeon removing tumors.
She had been twelve when the lawyers came. Thirteen when they moved from the house on the hill to the apartment above the dry cleaner. Fourteen when her mother started drinking, fifteen when she stopped eating, sixteen when she died quietly in her sleep, leaving Vanessa alone with a trust fund that had been emptied to pay creditors and
