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

But he liked the sound of the words together—”severe clear.” A crisp rhyme yielding a pristine image—stark blue sky, more sea than sky really, without a trace of diaphanous white, and soft, late-summer air. A beautiful day.


That’s why they chose it, although he didn’t realize it until later. Only then did he know it with the certainty with which you recognize something either terrible or wonderful. Otherwise, they would’ve picked Monday, the first day of the week.


But Monday it rained. Not a downpour or a steady patter but an iffy on-and-off kind of drizzle. He had taken Nan to dinner at the Peninsula Hotel, and he remembered the two of them sitting close at a table on the balcony, watching the rain hit the window in the dying September light. The city, at least the city he loved, was dying, too, weeping as it said goodbye. He just didn’t know it.


Chapter 20