Jade Cabral strides into the 21st century as a golden guy. Brilliant and beautiful, with a California cool and a Harvard education, he is poised for wealth and success in New York’s Financial District.<br><br>But Jade harbors a secret flaw, a thirst for revenge against Se?or Rodriguez, the California landowner who deprived his father – Se?or’s out-of-wedlock son, John Virgil -- of his family’s rightful inheritance and place in the world. Jade thinks if he succeeds in New York, he can make up for every loss and humiliation his family has endured at the hands of Se?or. That searing quest leads him into the arms of Nan Spencer, a lovely, fragile socialite, and to the top of the financial world, the Twin Towers, on September 11, 2001.

Seamless Sky

In keeping with a relationship in which everything was left unsaid to others, much was left unsaid between them. They never, for example, discussed her illness. The one time Jade broached the subject—”And you’re all right now, aren’t you?” he asked—she dismissed the question with a wave of the hand and a breezy “Oh, yes, yes, fine.”


She wasn’t, of course. But Jade understood that sometimes conversation intensified the anxiety it was meant to alleviate and diminished rather than strengthened a bond. Besides, truth was often revealed in lightning intuitions, not the gentlest form of revelation, perhaps. But then, you couldn’t necessarily choose your insights, could you?


Chapter 16