Inside the Grand Orison, 240 guests sat at silk-covered tables beneath chandeliers that hung from the ceiling like frozen waterfalls of crystal. Four forks at every place setting. Three glasses. A twelve-piece orchestra played softly from a raised platform at the far end of the hall.
This was the annual gala of Rexton Group, one of the most powerful private investment firms in the world.
The room smelled of money, white roses, and the warm confidence of people who had never once doubted that they belonged exactly where they were sitting.
The man behind Rexton Group was Baron Seal. He was fifty-one, broad-shouldered, with a jaw like carved stone and eyes that moved through a room the way searchlights move through fog. He missed nothing. He moved through the ballroom like a man who had never once doubted himself, and the room responded the way rooms always respond to that kind of certainty. Everyone turned slightly when he walked. Everyone smiled a little wider when he looked their way.
Baron had a private habit known only to his closest friends and never reported in any newspaper. He made bets—small, cruel, private bets—about human behavior. He would predict something embarrassing that would happen to someone in the room, then watch it happen and collect whatever was owed. His inner circle found this amusing.
That night, he had already won two bets before the main course arrived. One involved a junior employee spilling red wine. The other involved a guest’s wife saying something she immediately regretted. Baron was rarely wrong about people.
