Chapter I. The Velvet Guillotine

The gilt of the Capitol Hill dome flowed honeyed in the twilight as Adam Crawford smoothed the nonexistent creases in his Armani suit. He remembered his father saying that the steps of Washington were to be paved with the spines of his opponents. At the moment he was stepping over the wreckage of thirty-seven of his colleagues toward the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee.

The waiter swept past him with a tray of sturgeon caviar, twelve hypocritical smiles reflecting off the edge of the silver tray. Three of these men had left sperm spots in his car, five had collected his gold bars in Louis Vuitton stationery boxes, and the rest were quietly making payments to his Swiss bank account-a fancy name for political contributions was like putting an art salon door tag on a brothel.

"The champagne tower has to be tilted 15 degrees to refract the halo of the crystal lights." Emily Watson pressed her glass of red wine against her lips, diamond studs twinkling beside her carotid artery, "like the scene of Senator Beckett's assassination in 1987-oh sorry, I forgot your father was his legal counsel at the time."

Adam's pupils constricted slightly. The rookie assistant from Alabama, who three days ago had been ironing his speeches, was now spitting out silk threads entwined with black secrets like a poisonous spider. He glimpsed the waiter in the corner of the ballroom undoing his bowtie - the signal for an FBI raid.

The instant the crystal chandelier suddenly went out, Adam heard his spine snap. Not in the physical sense, but some kind of crisper disintegration. As the handcuffs jammed into his wrist bones, he saw Emily draw an inverted pentagram on her napkin with lipstick, the mark of the Blackstone Group's acquisition of prey.

"Mr. Crawford, you are suspected of money laundering and obstruction of justice." The agent's voice sounded like it was coming from underwater. Magnesium lights flashed frantically as his one hundred and twenty thousand dollar tailored suit soaked through the Bordeaux red wine like a clump of crusting blood.

As the escort van drove past the Lincoln Memorial, Adam saw his reflection crack in half on the bulletproof glass. On the left, the Wall Street Journal's "Most Influential People Under Thirty," and on the right, Ravenloft's number 7584, the lamb to be slaughtered. His fingers touched the cold flash drive in the inside pocket of his suit - it held evidence that could send half the Senate to prison, but was now more useless than an ice pick in the desert.