Chapter 1 - The First Nineteen
The second strike caught me across the ribs before I could draw breath.
Crack.
The sound was dry, clinical—the noise a dry branch makes when a heavy boot crushes it in the forest. My knees gave out, hitting the imported white oak floorboards with a dull thud that rattled my teeth.
Above me, Julian stood with his sleeves rolled up to his forearms, his monogrammed gold cufflinks gleaming beneath the recessed LED lighting. He wasn't breathing heavily. His face didn't hold the wild, red-eyed rage of a drunk or the frantic panic of a desperate man. He looked focused, methodical, like a surgeon making the first incision on a routine procedure.
Standing three feet behind him, wrapped in my cashmere throw, was Chloe.
She wasn't hiding her face. Her thumbs were hooked into the belt loops of her silk trousers, her fresh French manicure pink against the charcoal wool. She was twenty-four, an junior associate at Julian’s firm whose father sat on the zoning board for the Hudson Yards expansion.
"You're making a scene, Katherine," Julian said softly, stepping closer. His Italian leather oxfords stopped two inches from my left hand, which was trembling against the polished wood. "Look at you. Crying like a child over a minor correction."
"Julian..." My voice was a dry raspy whisper, clogged with blood from where my inner cheek had caught against my molars. "Your father... my father..."
"Your father is seventy-two years old and living off an estate in Greenwich that hasn't cleared a profit since the '08 crash," Julian interrupted, his voice dropping into that smooth, persuasive cadence he used when pitching venture capitalists at the Four Seasons. "You think Vance Sterling still controls the street? He’s a relic, Kat. A ghost in a three-piece suit."
He raised the cane again.
Three.
Pain flared down my spine, hot and bright like liquid copper.
Four.
May you like
Five.
I stopped trying to speak. I pressed my forehead against the cool oak, closed my eyes, and began counting the vibrations through the floor.
