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

The barosaurus bone was actually the spinal column of an animal that had been extinct for millions of years. It was encased in a Plexiglas footbridge that spanned part of one gallery. Halfway across, Jade stopped and looked down. The spine itself was nothing to look at—thick, beige, and segmented. But Jade was suddenly struck by the notion that it had once been part of a living creature, even as he was living now. It may have been only a dumb animal, but it had felt pain and hunger and thirst and fear and satisfaction, just as he did. And he realized then that he was linked to this creature, linked to everything that had come before it or had gone on since and would come after. He and that creature shared a life force that bound them together, even as it bound them to every other being, and that life force was God.


Chapter 18