DIRTY ANGELS
The dining room was small by the standards of the first mansion, only a long mahogany table, twelve chairs, and one candelabrum burning low.
Four men waited. At the head sat Otto Rotegarde, ninety-three years old, spine straight as a blade despite the walking stick of ebony and silver beside him. His skin was parchment stretched over bone, but his eyes, black, unblinking, held the weight of centuries. To his right and left sat his grandsons: Nathaniel, managing director of three central banks no one outside this room acknowledged existed; Jakob, the quiet architect of resource wars disguised as humanitarian interventions; and young Lionel, already the shadow hand behind half the algorithms