CHAPTER ONE: THE SILENCE BEFORE THE STORM
The sky over Manhattan was bruised with the colors of a storm not yet formed—steel gray and faintly purple, as if the clouds themselves were holding their breath. On the eighty-seventh floor of the Halcyon Tower, the city's most ambitious piece of architecture, Alexander Voss stood barefoot on cold marble, sipping espresso from a matte black cup that cost more than most people's rent.
He didn't blink as the storm rolled in.
A digital symphony of stock tickers, news alerts, and encrypted messages cascaded across the wall-length screen behind him. A team of analysts was already waiting in a conference room downstairs. Legal had just sent word that the European antitrust committee was circling again. And in twenty-three minutes, he would be live on CNBC, answering questions the world had been dying to ask since the leaked memo.
But none of that mattered yet.
Because at exactly 7:32 a.m., his private line lit up red—a color reserved for one name only.
He hesitated.
It had been three years since he last spoke to her. Since the press conference. Since the scandal that nearly ripped everything from him. His finger hovered over the glass, then tapped.
"Alex," came the voice, low and familiar. A whisper from a different life.
"Claire," he said, jaw tightening.
"They know," she said.
There was a silence so sharp it could have shattered glass.
"How much?" he asked.
"Enough to ruin you. Maybe worse."
She hung up.
He stared out the glass wall as the first drops of rain kissed the city, and the machine that was Voss International prepared to go to war.
---