EXTRACTION & INTERROGATION
PART ONE: THE TAKING
9:47 PM — The Plaza Hotel, Manhattan
The penthouse door opened without a key because Ghost had already handled that part. He’d slipped inside twenty minutes earlier, wearing a maintenance uniform, moving with the mechanical precision of a man who’d spent seven years learning how to be invisible inside systems designed to trap people like us.
The commission members were leaving. I could hear them in the hallway beyond their voices carrying the satisfied tone of men who believed they’d just secured the future. One of them laughed about a vintage wine. Another mentioned a property in the Cotswolds. They moved like they owned the world because, in a very real sense, they did.
Dante was positioned in the stairwell. Marco had the elevator seal
