Julian Thorne was a man who operated on the fuel of his own perceived brilliance. For the past forty-eight hours, ever since he had successfully funneled a quarter of a million dollars out of Vanguard PR and into the Vanguard Nexus shell account, he had been practically floating. He walked with a re

The glass-walled conference room at Novus Dynamics hovered sixty floors above Manhattan, a pristine incubator where million-dollar deals were born and killed before lunch.

Julian stood at the head of the massive oak table, adjusting the cuffs of his Tom Ford suit. He was sweating, just a fraction,

The atmosphere at Vanguard PR was electric by the time I stepped off the elevator. Word of the Novus Dynamics deal had already leaked through the agency's internal Slack channels, and the bullpen was buzzing with the kind of manic, celebratory energy that only a multi-million dollar retainer could b