She nodded toward the two harbor officers standing quietly at the gangway.

“Harborstone Trust executed the assignment of the mortgage to Vantage Capital at 9:14 this morning.

Your cure period expired forty-eight hours ago.

Madam President has authorized the freeze.”

She handed me a heavy steel pen.

I leaned over the teak table — the same table where, twenty minutes earlier, Theodora had set down the empty martini glass she had just poured over me — and I signed my name on the final authorization block, one clean stroke of black ink, and the repossession was sealed.