The morning sun hit the floor-to-ceiling windows of the West Wing, but inside the private suite, the air felt like a frozen tomb.
I stood by the edge of the mahogany desk, watching Dante. He hadn't touched his coffee. He hadn't said a single word in ten minutes. His dark suit coat was thrown over the back of a leather chair, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his forearms, revealing the hard, tense muscle beneath.
On the digital tablet in front of him burned a high-resolution image that had hit the syndicate’s dark-web wire less than an hour ago.
The photo showed a dimly lit hotel lounge. In the center of the frame, a woman who looked unmistakably like me was sitting close to a handsome, dark-haired man- Julian Vance, an old southern acquaintance whose family had fallen out with the Vane em
