The sound of torrential rain on bulletproof glass sounded like some kind of encrypted Morse code as Ethan Cole loosened his fifth shirt button, the sapphire cufflinks refracting in the cold light of the surveillance screen in a treacherous patch of light. The taillights of the taxicabs thirty-seven floors below were brightly lit, like stardust scattered across the earth, but not as bright as the river of numbers on the twelve displays in front of him.
"Anomalous fluctuations in the Dow Jones appeared at 11:23." The assistant pushed the tablet in front of him, his fingerprints haloing the fog on the tempered glass, "Hedge fund account that shorted the Benson Group, IP address in the Seychelles."
Ethan's fingertips traced the rim of his coffee cup, the espresso remaining at the bottom of the cup like dried blood. He suddenly squinted and zoomed in on one of the surveillance feeds-the surveillance view of the Tiffany flagship store on Fifth Avenue, where the red-haired woman was pressing a diamond necklace to her collarbone at just the right angle to expose the scar on the side of her neck to the camera.
"Pull up the last seventy-two hours of transactions from the Seychelles account." The old knife wound in the knot of his throat twitched slightly as he spoke, a souvenir from his sixteen year old days in the underground boxing ring. His blue-gray pupils constricted suddenly as the screen popped up the encrypted archive: the time of each transaction corresponded precisely to the surveillance timestamps of the red-haired woman's appearances in various parts of Manhattan.
His assistant's exclamation of surprise was cut off by the ding of the elevator arriving, and Ethan turned his head to see the lights of a penthouse apartment lit up in a rainstorm outside the glass wall of the property he'd sold to a certain Nice heir just three days earlier. At that moment the 600-inch floor-to-ceiling windows suddenly lit up with a projected image of a redheaded woman unzipping her Chanel jacket with her back to the window, her shoulder blades undulating like a cheetah's bowed back under a silk nightgown.
"Cybersecurity needs to be notified ..." The assistant's words came to an abrupt end. The woman on the security camera turned suddenly, looking precisely where they were across thirty-seven floors of emptiness and two hundred meters of distance.The veins on the backs of Ethan's hands rippled, and his sapphire cufflinks knocked over his coffee cup, blotting the brown liquid across the chart of Benson Group's stock.
Ethan smelled intrigue when his cell phone rang in the dead silence. A missive came in from an unknown number: "The Wolf of Wall Street shouldn't be spying on his neighbor's dinner - Violet Dubois," and the attached night-vision surveillance image showed the layout of his office as clear as an operating table autopsy.
"Prepare the car." The dial of his wristwatch reflected his own distorted face as Ethan tugged his tie loose, "Go to 780 Fifth Avenue."
The Rolls-Royce looked like a black bullet through the rainstorm. The in-car screen automatically played the midday news: "Mystery Wealthy Woman Violet Dubois Buys Central Park West Penthouse for Cash ..." The anchorwoman's voice suddenly lagged, and Ethan watched as his cell phone automatically jumped to an encrypted folder from three years ago, where photos of the yacht bombing scene were flashing up one by one.
The sound of tires screeching ripped through the rainy night as the driver braked sharply.Ethan looked up and saw the woman sprawled out on the windshield - her red hair plastered wet against her pale face, her Givenchy dress turning blood red from the rain.Violet's fingertips drew a bloody smile on the glass, and her new French manicure had a corner missing, revealing an old pale pink scar underneath. old pale pink scars underneath.
"Do we need to call the police? Sir!" The driver's trembling hand pressed on the 911 shortcut.
Ethan pushed the door open instead, rain instantly soaking through the hundred-thousand-dollar tailored suit.The way Violet cocked her head and surveyed him reminded him of the albino python he'd seen as a child in Coney Island, that beautiful, hungry gaze.
"You tampered with the beneficiary clause of the Benson Trust." Rainwater slid into the corners of his mouth as he spoke, tasting rust, "But the real chess game started three years ago, didn't it Ms. Amber?"
The moment lightning split the sky, Violet's laughter mingled with the thunder to fill his eardrums. It sounded like sandpaper sanding velvet, with the distinctive hoarseness of a scalpel carved through it, "Ethan Cole, mother's name Marina Cole, died in the VIP ward of St. Luke's Hospital in 2003 because the Benson family bought out all the anti-rejection drugs."
Ethan's fist brought up a curtain of rain as it swung out, but stopped hard millimeters from the tip of her nose.Violet held up her cell phone, and on the screen was a picture of Marina in chemo, her withered fingers still wearing moonstone studs identical to Ethan's left ear.
"Your mother's hospice physician charged me two hundred thousand euros." She licked the rain off the corner of her lips, "Want to know what her last words were?"
The windshield wipers cut a shrill rhythm in the dead silence. ethan's cufflinks suddenly beeped, the red light of an alarm that the company's security system had been breached reflected in Violet's pupils. Her surgically modified vocal cords vibrated against his eardrums as she whispered close to his ear, "She said 'watch those animals go to hell for me'."
Violet's retreat into the rain faded into transparency as sirens sounded from three blocks away, and Ethan touched the extra flash drive in the inside pocket of his suit, the metal surface engraved with the Benson Group logo and 1998-the year his mother became the elder Benson's mistress.
When he got back to the car, the in-car system automatically played the latest tweet, "Breaking! Benson Group's largest shareholder, Jared Thompson, is being investigated by the SEC. ..." Ethan bites into the anti-anxiety medication contained in the bottom of his tongue, and the sweet, fishy flavor explodes in his mouth. In the rearview mirror, Violet was standing under the streetlight on the corner, carving words into the glass with the sapphire cufflinks torn from his suit.
As the rain washed away the words, "Check your coffee machine," Ethan suddenly remembered the cappuccino his secretary had brought this morning, which seemed to have some kind of crystalline powder sunk in the bottom of the glass.
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The Fifth Avenue window reflected two women wearing the same Givenchy red dress, and as the scent of Lila's perfume and Violet's rose were strangling in the elevator car, a certain hand wearing Chanel nail polish was quietly pressing the emergency stop button ...