The quietness in the Rolls-Royce was a living creature. It was no longer the command's silence or the drowsiness of exhaustion; it was a charged, heavy emptiness, oscillating with all that had been said and, more importantly, all that had not. The partition between them and the driver shut, confining them in a muffled, noiseless world of their own making. The glittering show of the opera house receded from them, but its vitality—the whispers, the looks, the flash of the camera—lingered like tracing on skin.Jonah sat stiffly in the chair opposite him, the soft velvet now abrasive against his back. He could still feel the imprint of Clarkson's hand on his shoulder, a kind of possession that had thrilled and terrified him. He could still remember the metal in Clarkson's tone when he'd defended him to that primping socialite. The wisest mind at my table.He risked a glance across the darkened room. Clarkson was a figure in silhouette against the flashing lights of Fifth Avenue, his face
The invitation wasn't a request. It rested on Jonah's desk, a thick cream-colored cardstock rectangle squarely in the center of the otherwise vacant area on his desk. Etched in a serious, elegant script were the words: The New York Metropolitan Opera Guild Annual Gala. At the bottom, penned in Eleanor's careful script, was a note: Black tie. The car picks up at 7 PM. Mr. Clarkson's regards.Jonah picked it up in his hand. It was heavy, expensive. A lifetime away from his own evenings of takeout and case files. This wasn't a working meal or a covert gathering. This was a statement. A premiere.At seven sharp, a black Rolls-Royce, still as a panther, crested his curb. The interior was a tomb of leather and burled wood. Clarkson was already inside, a moonlit and shadow-hewn figure. He looked good in the well-fitted black tuxedo, a harsh white bow tie around his neck, his physique so exaggerated by the dressy clothes it was all but intimidating. He cast a fleeting glance at Jonah's direct
The air in the sixty-eighth-floor conference room was thin and bitter, sweet with expensive coffee and exhaustion. They were trapped there for seven hours, dismembering the corpse of a dying tech startup. The founders—the two young men in sweatshirts who had opened the week as paper millionaires and would end it as debtors to Julian Clarkson—were slumped forward in their chairs, their energy and their equity spent by Clarkson's relentless, scalpel questioning.Jonah hurt all along his bones. His suit jacket draped over the back of his chair, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, and there pulsed a low-grade headache at the back of his eyes. He'd been running numbers, double-checking patents, and playing devil's advocate for hours, all with Clarkson's watchful, unnervingly intense eye. The guy was driven by some internal nuclear power plant, not caring about the late night or the psychic wear at the meeting.The final point of contention was a seemingly trivial choice: the founders' non-c
The car, black and quiet with dark glass, moved along the rotting industrial edge of Newark like a shark moving through fouled water. It had been an abrupt change from Manhattan's shining canyons to this landscape of chain-link fencing, graffiti-covered warehouses, and the hollow, echoing quiet of abandoned industry. Jonah rode it all, a tight ball tightening in his stomach.Julian Clarkson was sitting beside him, impeccably dressed in a charcoal suit that absorbed the weak evening light. He was reading something on his tablet, his own face a mask of detached intensity. He had given no background for this trip, only a brusque command to arrive at the lobby by 6 PM. To be brief was itself a briefing. This was no run-of-the-mill corporate negotiation.“Eleanor usually handles the pre-meeting dossier,” Jonah ventured, breaking the tense quiet. “I’m going in cold.”Clarkson didn’t look up from his screen. “Some deals aren’t found in dossiers, Miles. They’re found in the spaces between the
The confusion that followed Jonah's departure was not empty, but a vacuum, sucking all warmth and noise out of the office, leaving only the cold thrum of the air conditioning and the fading crackle of the fire. Julian Clarkson stood at the window, his back to the room, his face a ghostly, expressionless mask over the storm-worn city.The shock had been instant, a rebooting of the system for a man whose every move was scripted and whose word was absolute. It had been preceded by an icy, cleansing anger so pure it was like a drug. Jonah Miles hadn't just said no to an offer; he'd said no to Clarkson's entire philosophy, his entire way of life, the engine of his being. He'd gazed into the face of the devil and called him a coward.And he'd done it with a match.Clarkson's fingers tightened around the crystal tumbler. The beautiful leaded glass, a product of centuries of skill and opulence, was a statement of permanence. Jonah's gesture had been one of momentary, stupid defiance. Ashes. T
The tempest that lashed the floor-to-ceiling windows of Julian Clarkson's office was a mirror image of the tempest raging behind them. Rain swept across the glass, distorting the glinting, rain-streaked Manhattan skyline into a mosaic of smeared ambition and cold light. Behind the windows, air was still, filled with the scent of worn leather, quality bourbon, and tension so thick it was almost a third occupant of the room.Jonah faced the teak monolith of a desk, his fists relaxed and bunched at his sides. He wasn't a small man, but in this cavernous room, overwhelmed as he was by Clarkson's domain and Clarkson himself, he felt like a sparring student in the presence of a grand master. The file on the desk in front of him—a black, shiny portfolio—started to feel less like paper than it did a live grenade with the pin pulled.Clarkson relaxed into his throne chair, entwining his fingers. His face was a mask of detached, objective judgment, the face he wore for delicate mergers and host