By sunrise, I was sitting in her office on the forty-second floor downtown.

The city had only begun to wake beneath a pale gray sky. Cars flowed along the expressway like thin streams of light. Valerie stood by the windows in a charcoal suit, holding black coffee, her expression unreadable.

Her office was all steel, glass, and silence. There were no family photographs. I’d always admired that.

I dropped the ledger, the bank statements, the property deeds, and the transfer records onto her desk.

They landed with a heavy thud.

Valerie read.