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 there was no blood to warm him, no grandfathers to say it was not the natural order to bury your children and your children’s children, no sister to say, Now it is just us two


So at St. Mikey’s, packed to overflowing with his mother’s students and editors, Bethzatha’s workers and his brother and sister’s friends—testaments to the lives his family touched—Jade was alone. 15


That night Jade went home to his parents’ house, crawled into his old bed, and listened to his aloneness. It was a silence broken only by the cyclical whirr of the refrigerator.


Belle was staying at the manor house, ostensibly to be mothered by Paris. But Jade feared she was being drawn into Se?or’s web. He didn’t like the way she stood on the porch. When had she become so comfortable there? She was seventeen, and he hardly knew her. And what he could surmise only made him uneasy.


Chapter 31