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

Jade: It hit her like a thunderbolt. This must’ve been the same creative fire that struck Einstein and Fermi and all those other boring people she read about in the history of science class she was taking to get out of studying actual science. Jade and Ms. Martinez. Ms. Martinez and Jade. Technically, she was not her teacher yet, so there could be no hint of a conflict of interest—or whatever it was Jade was always railing about whenever some Wall Street type came on TV. Plus, like Jade, Ms. Martinez was a Californian who had spent plenty of time back East, having gone to Sarah Lawrence and then N.Y.U. for her master’s in writing. There she caused a minor stir with a collection of essays on popular culture and feminism, This About That.Or was it That About This?”


Belle whipped out her pink Bad Girl’s Power Planner: Memo to self, she wrote, Bone up on “This,” “That.”


Chapter 39