The rain in Tokyo did not fall like the heavy, chaotic storms of Chicago; it drifted down in a relentless, neon-lit mist that blurred the towering glass obelisks of Shinjuku. Sixty-four floors above the pavement, inside the hyper-minimalist executive conference hall of the Grand Hyatt, the atmosphere was pressurized to the point of absolute silence.
Five years had passed.
Alejandro Vargas sat at the head of the dark obsidian conference table, his hands resting heavily on the silver head of his cane. The passing of half a decade had done nothing to soften the titan. The silver at his temples had turned completely snow-white, his jawline sharper, his eyes more deeply set in a face that had forgotten how to look at anything with warmth. He had spent sixty months maintaining an empire that f
