Chapter 16
Ten minutes later, the heavy mahogany double doors of my office swung open.
Fiona Vance staggered into the room. The transformation was staggering. Her hair was completely silver, tangled and unbrushed; her face was etched with deep, hollow wrinkles carved by endless stress and cheap alcohol; and her clothes hung loosely off her skeletal frame like a discarded sack.
She took two trembling steps toward my minimalist oak desk, her eyes wide with a mixture of desperate humiliation and lingering, bitter hatred.
“Sloan…” Fiona breathed out, her voice cracking into a pathetic wheeze. She reached out a claw-like, dirt-stained hand, as if expecting me to stand up and offer her a seat.
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I remained seated, resting my hands neatly over the polished wood, my expression completely frozen in a mask of absolute, chilling indifference.
“You’re trespassing, Fiona,” I said, my voice cutting through the quiet office like a scalpel. “Security is already on floor forty. You have exactly thirty seconds to walk out of those doors under your own power before they physically drag you back to the pavement.”
