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

“Oh, God,” Jade screamed, pounding the steering wheel until his palms were marked by deep, shiny red welts. “Why, why, why?”


He kept shouting and banging the wheel until he collapsed sobbing, his forehead hitting the wheel at twelve o’clock.


Sometime later, he felt someone staring at him. There was a man outside the driver’s window, unremarkable in every way except that he had suddenly appeared on a deserted stretch of highway.


Dumbfounded, Jade rolled down the window. He must’ve looked a sight—a lump already forming on his forehead, his face streaked with tears, his eyes so puffy it hurt to open them.


“You better get out of here, mister,” the man said. “It isn’t safe for you. Go home.”


Jade nodded dumbly, running his hands over his wet face.


“You want a ride?” he asked the man.


But he had already gone, disappeared into the recesses of the place from which messengers come.


And Jade, knowing a sign when he saw it, drove numbly home. 24


Chapter 49