The boardroom on the forty-second floor had never felt smaller.
Marcus stood at the head of the long glass table while twelve faces watched him with varying degrees of calculation and concern. The stock had opened down fourteen percent. Two major investors had already requested private calls. The air smelled of coffee and quiet panic.
Arthur Vance sat three seats down on the right, perfectly at ease, as if he had never left the building. Silver hair immaculate, charcoal suit unmarked by the early hour. He had arrived twenty minutes before the meeting was called to order, smiling, shaking hands, asking after wives and children he had never bothered to remember before.
Marcus had not slept. The hospital still clung to him—the antiseptic, the steady beep of Chloe’s monitor, the look in her
