The tranquility was fleeting. One quiet day, a fragile bubble of peace in the penthouse, insulated from the fiscal wreckage and public humiliation. They had spent it in virtual quiet, hardly a word spoken, just re-learning the contours of each other's presence. The world, however, had not finished with them.It arrived not with a headline shout, but a whisper. An plain, unsealed envelope, brought by a delivery man who had materialized and vanished so quickly he was hardly seen. On the penthouse welcome mat, a white square of pure malevolence. Robert Clarkson's hand trembled over it, his stomach already a cold knot of fear. He knew, with a sense of foreboding like a death warrant, who it was from.There was nothing written on the inside. No message. Just one, solitary, typewritten page—a transcript—and a black-and-white, grainy photograph.The photograph showed a twenty-years-younger Robert Clarkson, his face unlined by the troubles of an empire, his hair more substantial. He was shaki
Last Updated : 2025-10-04 Read more