Before entering the private banquet suite, Hudson Nolan had been navigating the social hierarchy of Crown City with the practiced detachment of a seasoned bureaucrat. As the newly minted Vice President of the State Commerce Bank, he was accustomed to being the sun around which minor planets orbited. However, the moment he stepped through the threshold, the sheer density of the room's chaos caught him off guard. In the flickering light of the crystal chandeliers, amidst the scent of spilled red wine and expensive soup, he saw two faces that should never have existed in the same spatial reality.
The first face belonged to Leo Callahan. Just that afternoon, Leo had been a quivering mass of sycophancy, bowing so low in the bank's lobby that Hudson had been worried the boy might actually strik
