With my fingertips resting against the icy floor-to-ceiling glass of my sixty-fifth-floor penthouse office, I watched violet twilight engulf the streets below. The Opeline rose beneath my handcrafted Italian loafers, its dark tower descending toward the harbor waters. The immense black tower was an architectural landmark. Every inch of its imported limestone exterior, every hand-cut crystal suspended in the atrium, and every thread of eight-hundred-count Egyptian cotton in its four hundred luxury suites was indisputably mine. StudyChemistry Yet a sleek smartphone vibrated on the broad surface of my black marble desk. The glowing message reminded me that, to my own relatives, I remained the unwanted stray they had thrown into the winter cold ten years earlier.

crying echoing down the hallway.

CHAPTER 4: THE PREDATORS’ FEAST

The Skyline Level was The Opeline’s crown jewel. Eight hundred feet above the streets, its private dining room had a curved glass wall offering a panoramic, 360-degree view of the twinkling harbor lights and the vast, black ocean beyond.

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The room was bathed in the warm glow of recessed amber sconces and twenty-four-karat gold leaf chandeliers. In the center stood a thirty-foot table made from one flawless slab of fallen English walnut.

At the distant end of the table,

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