And in that moment, meeting Karl’s eyes across the marble desk, Clara Vance made a decision.

The two men had been rude to her, and she might, on another night, have let rudeness pass.

But they had also, she now understood, been cruel to Lupita, casually and habitually, treating the best employee in the building as furniture, and that, in a company Clara had built on the principle that character is revealed by how you treat the powerless, was not a thing she would let stand.

Nobody in that lobby could have guessed, looking at the woman in the faded leather jacket, who she was, or what she was about to do.