Leonard Reed, head of a chain of multimedia companies, was the owner of those black eyes.
"Is that Crusher's wife?" he had asked his assistant as soon as they entered.
"That is right. She is much younger than him, they got married not long ago."
He knew in detail the gossip and rumors that had been circulating for months. Alice, his wife, had taken it upon herself to inform him of everything she heard: she was a younger woman, pretty, a university student, and a social climber. But seeing her in person was a very different thing. She seemed strangely familiar to him and he could not figure out why. Perhaps he had run into her at another event sometime; he did not remember.
Reed was respected among his colleagues for his charisma and the impulsiveness that, somehow, brought hi
