Chapter 16 — The Boardroom

By a quarter past eight that morning, the sun had risen bright and cold over the Manhattan skyline, and on the high floor of my company’s tower, in the boardroom, my cousin Anthony sat at the head of the long conference table, surrounded by six board members, my chief legal counsel, and two city politicians.

Every one of them believed I was still lying in a coma across town, hours from a death that would make them all richer.

“It is with a heavy heart,” Anthony was announcing, dabbing at a dry eye with a linen handkerchief, “that we initiate the emergency transition protocol.