Beside Nick stood **Carter Holbrook**.
The Senior Vice President of Commercial Acquisitions for **The Holbrook-Vance Syndicate**—the ten-million-dollar prospective client we had supposed to pitch at eight-thirty.
Carter was sixty-two years old, tall, lean, with silver hair cropped into a severe military high-and-tight cut, wearing a double-breasted navy blazer with gold anchor buttons.
Across his wrist gleamed a platinum Patek Philippe.
He didn’t look angry about the missed pitch.
He looked like a man who had just inspected a slaughterhouse and found the carcass properly hung.
I rolled the window down two inches.
The hot morning air poured into the car, carrying Nick’s expensive cologne—Creed *Aventus* mixed with stale mint gum and twenty years of family vanity:
“Sebastian,” Nick said, his voice dropping into that smooth, condescending, executive drawl he used when canceling an employee’s health insurance:
