The private elevator hummed as it shot upward, a sleek bullet of glass and steel ascending toward the eighty-fifth floor of the Croft Syndicate headquarters. The digital floor indicator ticked higher with agonizing slowness, but inside the cab, the air was crackling with lethal energy.

Nora Vance

Forty-eight hours later, the dust had finally settled over the city's art district.

Nora sat behind the massive mahogany desk in the Chairman's office, the late afternoon sun streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows and casting long, golden shadows across the room. The space was still sparse

Nora stepped into the room, dropping her coat over the back of a leather sofa. She didn't wait for permission. She didn't wait for an invitation.

She walked across the room, closing the distance between them, stepping into his space not as an employee, and not as a creditor.

She stepped into his