The nightmare descending upon the Lynn Family showed no signs of abating. It was a suffocating, heavy blanket of despair woven from a debt of thirty-five million dollars. The weight of it pressed down on every chest, making each breath a labor.
Inside the estate, the air was thick with cigarette smoke and the sour scent of fear. Arthur Lynn, Caroline Lynn, Martha Pierce, Howard Lynn, and Susan Pierce—none of them had rested. They had spent the last few days running like headless chickens, exhausting every contact, pulling every favor, and scraping the bottom of every barrel to raise the funds.
But at every turn, they hit a wall of steel.
When Arthur attempted to withdraw the emergency reserves from the subsidiary accounts, the bank manager, usually a man of oily smiles, met him with a s
