Chapter 1
The soft ambient blue lighting of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner illuminated the quiet first-class cabin as we leveled off at thirty-five thousand feet over the Atlantic Ocean.
In seat 2A, Julian leaned back in his leather lie-flat seat, sipping vintage Dom Pérignon while whispering something into the ear of the young woman beside him.
Her name was Chloe Vance—a twenty-four-year-old junior marketing analyst hired by our firm six months ago under Julian’s direct personal recommendation.
Chloe giggled softly, her fingers tracing the rose-gold links of the twelve-thousand-dollar Cartier panther pendant resting against her collarbone.
She had no idea that the credit card used to purchase that necklace was tied directly to my personal line of credit at JP Morgan Chase.
Nor did she realize that the luxury leather travel bag tucked neatly beneath Julian’s footwell was customized with my family’s private crest on the inner lining.
I stood behind the galley curtain, my fingers moving with swift, disciplined precision across the glass touch screen of my iPad Pro.
As a senior international purser and the fifty-percent co-founder of Mercer Global Logistics, I possessed full administrative bypass credentials for our corporate accounts.
May you like
Julian had assumed that my dedication to my aviation career meant I was too busy flying oceanic routes to ever monitor the daily wire ledgers.
He believed I was merely a uniform-wearing wife who approved his corporate expense reports without ever reading the line-item attachments.
