Chapter 1

"Staff and vendors use the service entrance."

Trent Mabry said it with his palm flat against the elevator door, blocking the opening like he owned the building instead of merely renting the forty-first floor. Behind him, the launch party glittered through glass doors: champagne trays, investor smiles, floor-to-ceiling windows holding Minneapolis at a distance. The city lay below like something you could buy if you had enough term sheets.

Gus Halvorsen stood in the elevator doorway with a manila envelope in his left hand. Seventy-one years old. Plain navy zip jacket. Oxford shirt buttoned to the collar. Corduroy trousers and practical black walking shoes. He did not look like a man who belonged at a launch party for a delivery-tech startup. He looked like a man who had come to read a meter.

Mabry's name tag caught the light: TRENT MABRY, COO. Charcoal suit. White shirt, no tie. Expensive watch. Sharp smile that had already decided the answer.

"I'm not staff," Gus said.

"You're not on the list."

"I don't need to be on the list."

Mabry's hand stayed on the door. "Wrong floor. Service elevator's behind the kitchen."

Ava Delacroix looked up from the reception desk three feet away. Chief of staff. Emerald silk blouse, black tailored trousers, dark auburn hair pulled into a sleek low bun. She was strikingly beautiful in a room built to distract, and she was doing what people do when they want to keep a job: keeping her eyes down.

Gus did not argue. He set the manila envelope on the reception desk. It landed with a soft, heavy slap.

"It's addressed to the tenant," he said. "Someone should sign for it."

Mabry glanced at the envelope, then at the security guard near the glass doors. "Walk him to the freight elevator."

The guard stepped forward. Gus did not resist. He looked past Mabry, past the champagne and the pitch decks and the polished floor, to the window. Forty-one floors down, the city moved without caring. Somewhere outside, carved into limestone, the name HALVORSEN still faced the street in six-inch letters.

Ava's hand hovered over the envelope. She looked at the return address. Then she looked again.

Gus turned toward the freight elevator. The guard put a hand near his elbow, not touching yet, just guiding.

Ava slid one finger under the flap.