He had put a swan ice sculpture and a string quartet and the good opinion of a room full of people who despised me on one side of a scale, and on the other side he had put the ability of thousands of strangers to walk, and he had decided the swan was worth more.

That was the man tapping a spoon against a microphone one floor below me.

That was the legacy he was about to toast.

And I stood in that elevator understanding, with a clarity that felt almost peaceful, that I was not going to let it happen — not for the money, though it was my money, but for the nineteen-year-old and his sobbing mother and everyone like them my father had never once thought to consider.

Chapter 10 — Panic Is Expensive

I burst into my suite and shut the door, my hands shaking so hard I could barely unlock my phone.