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

As Paris went in, Belle kissed her and walked slowly down the steps to the lawn, stopping a few feet in front of her brother. She wore a sleeveless cream-colored sheath—the kind Lleyton’s mother favored—her hair swept up in a French twist. She looked different—older, thinner, and yet more composed, grounded. Jade thought that in the last five months since he’d seen her she had somehow grown up.


“You heard about Lleyton,” she said. “But, of course, you did. And you’re glad, glad he’s gone from me. Well, I can’t blame you. I never deserved him.”


“And now Se?or has left you everything and me, well, not so much—certainly nothing equal to the trouble I put everyone through in the hopes of inheriting the estate. You must be enjoying that, too. All my plotting and planning. All that scheming and sucking up. I even betrayed my own brother. All for naught. I’ve lost everything—Lleyton, you, this place, all my hopes and dreams.”


Chapter 54