The penthouse Julian and I shared was a monument to his ego. It was a sprawling, multi-level glass box in the sky, decorated in stark whites, cold marbles, and metallic accents that screamed of new money and desperate validation. There was not a single personal touch of mine in the entire five thous

At 9:55 AM, I stood outside the frosted glass walls of Victoria Croft’s corner office, feeling the cold, hard weight of a silver USB drive in my blazer pocket.

My resting heart rate was a steady sixty-two beats per minute. I had spent the entire morning calibrating my appearance to project exactly

The ballroom of the St. Regis was drowning in gold.

Crystal chandeliers the size of small vehicles hung from the vaulted ceilings, casting a warm, expensive glow over the hundreds of venture capitalists, tech journalists, and Wall Street executives who had gathered to celebrate the impending publi