PROLOGUE
Sunday February 9th
The office was silent but for the low hum of air conditioning and the serene strains of Bach’sGoldberg Variationsdrifting from the ceiling speakers.Richard Brennan sat upright at his glass-topped desk, Montblanc pen poised above a printout of market data, a man who insisted on hard copy when everyone else had gone digital.
He was forty-eight, trim, silver at the temples, a man who looked exactly like the creation he was—the offspring of ancestral poverty and brand new money, one of Manhattan’s most successful merchant bankers, a monument to the American Dream, as well as to his own capacity for hard, hard work.Behind him, the mid-winter light washed over a room curated to convey taste without ostentation: abstract art, a pair of Barcelona chairs, a Persian rug that cost more than most people’s cars.The building was empty.The city outside was not—New York never was, never could be—but up here, twenty-seven floors above Madison Avenue, Brennan could have been the last person on earth.
He liked it that way.
Sundays were his sanctuary, when no calls came in, no colleagues hovered at the door pretending not to angle for promotion.It was the one time when Brennan could think.He took a slow sip from his vacuum flask, savouring the civet coffee—a rare Indonesian blend that required its own paperwork to get past customs.He’d brought in a case last month, partly for the flavour, mostly because it symbolized the victory of hard work over circumstance.
He repeated that phrase often: the victory of work.It was what separated him from the noise below, from the men who blamed the world for their failures.He’d fought for everything—out of a narrow Baltimore row-house, one of five kids, a father who’d vanished before his sixth birthday, a mother who’d cleaned motels for cash.No silver spoon.No handouts.Only drive.Hustle.Work.
Work was the only sacred thing there was.
He had tried to explain this to Belinda that morning, during their usual Sunday argument—the one that began with her voice sharp from disappointment, his rising with impatience, both reciting things that were more grooves than lines.
She wanted him with her at church, "for the children's sake."
He wanted her to understand that the reason they had the townhouse, the Aspen chalet, the nursery school whose fees rivalled Ivy League tuition, the nanny, and the housekeeper was that he refused to switch off.Because of work.Hiswork.The markets didn’t rest; nor could he.
But Belinda—beautiful, spoiled, thirteen years his junior—had never understood.Born to privilege, she thought effort was something you brought to a Pilates class.
Still, he’d promised himself he would make it right tonight.He’d book a table at Le Bernardin, bring gifts for the kids, charm his way back.Then, perhaps, she might finally stop looking at him as if his success were a sin.
He reached for the phone, thumb hovering over the restaurant’s number—then stopped.
The elevator had moved.
He glanced back at the digital display.27 ↑
That was odd.He’d told security—Guttierez, an affable ex-cop with a bad knee—not to come up here during the weekend.Brennan disliked interruptions almost as much as he disliked inefficiency.And the delivery driver knew to leave his lunchtime maki-roll platter at the desk and take the cash from the envelope that was in the drawer of the custodian's desk; all the drivers knew it.Brennan would come down for it when he was ready.It had taken him months to get that simple procedure across to all the delivery boys, but now, at least, they understood.
The elevator doors clanged softly somewhere beyond the frosted glass corridor.
He frowned, returned his gaze to the spreadsheet—and noticed it.A single decimal point, misplaced in column F.He cursed, circled it, and leaned forward to correct it on the screen.
The door opened behind him.
He straightened.“I thought we—”
But it wasn’t Guttierez.Or a delivery driver.
A tall figure filled the doorway, wrapped in a dark, hooded garment that fell to the knees.For a second, Brennan thought this had to be some kind of joke—a prank by a colleague, or some leftist mischief-maker who’d slipped past security.But something about the stillness of the figure—utterly motionless, face all but swallowed by the hood—stopped the words in his throat.
“Who the hell are you?”Brennan barked.“This is a private floor.You need to—”
He stopped mid-sentence.No answer.No movement.
He reached for his phone.
The figure moved faster than seemed possible, one latex-gloved hand slamming down across his wrist, sending the phone skittering over the polished floor.The smell that hit him then—ozone and cold metal—was wrong.
Brennan backed away, chest tightening.“Take whatever you want.There’s cash in the drawer, cards—”
The voice that answered was not a voice but a distortion, mechanical and layered, as though scraped through a broken amplifier.
“Recite after me.”
