Daniel Whitaker did not look like an executive vice president now.
He lay pinned against the mahogany defense table, his nose bleeding onto his forged financial affidavits, tears and spit running down his chin, weeping with the wet, pathetic, sniveling rattles of an emperor whose forty-year kingdom had just been melted down into scrap iron before the cameras of the world:
“Clara…” Daniel wept into the wood, his blood pooling around his split lower lip:
“Clara, please! Tell them! Tell Colonel Carter we can settle this! I did it for us! Julian promised me thirty million dollars in carried interest! We were going to buy the estate in Saint-Tropez! We were going to take Lily to private school in Switzerland! I didn’t mean to hurt you! The doctors swore the patch would only make you sleepy!”
I pulled myself upright on the transport gurney.
The flight surgeons did not stop me.
