00:00In that suffocating cloud of mint and cold cedar, I finally understood I had fallen all the way.
00:06Not just this body, which he'd already taken apart and put back together.
00:10Even the head I'd always kept clear had sunk slowly and without my noticing
00:13into this high-stakes table called Surrender.
00:17The cardinal sin at any table is the reckless bed.
00:19So I made mine. I picked the biggest dealer in the room and went all in.
00:24Mr. Elias, if you want my life, fine.
00:30It's yours.
00:31In exchange for a clean exit, I told him everything.
00:33Except to get M.I. through overseas cash flow.
00:37Max's greedy hand on the betrayal.
00:39The trap I'd built around Arthur with the bait of the private seal.
00:42It was every piece of honesty I had.
00:44The only loyalty I could pledge in a meat grinder like this.
00:48When I was done, something shifted in the dark of Elias's eyes.
00:51The cold thinning out, the look softening into something playful enough to drown in.
00:55He bent down, ran the cool of his fingertip along the mole.
00:59At the corner of my eye like a reward.
01:05Next time, when I'm no longer a married man, I'll stay the night.
01:11Then, all at once, Manhattan rolled into its loudest Christmas.
01:15Times Square was a hallucination of neon lighting the city up like a tomb that never slept.
01:20I was sitting at the window of a restaurant with a few of my sisters.
01:24The ones who'd also gotten trapped in this glittering world.
01:27Watching crowds and snow move past the glass.
01:30And the gap between glasses being set down.
01:32The call I'd been waiting for came in.
01:34The one that stopped my heart.
01:35I gave him the name of the restaurant.
01:37I could hear my heart pounding through every word.
01:40Ten minutes later, I pushed the revolving door open.
01:42And stepped into the Manhattan cold that cuts to the bone.
01:45The crowd was a moving tapestry.
01:47A thousand lit windows above us turned into a hollow backdrop.
01:51And then, where the light started to thin out, a tall, slim figure in a black cashmere coat.
01:56Elias was walking toward me through a cheering Christmas crowd.
01:59The familiar cold pride was still in the line of his brow.
02:02But the second his eyes found mine, I caught at a warmth I hadn't seen on him.
02:06The warmth a regular person carries.
02:08Enough to thaw out every cold corner of this city.
02:10I grew up in New York.
02:11I had never known the city was this big block after block of indifference.
02:15And calculation running all the way from one end to the other.
02:18And I had never known New York could be this small.
02:21Small enough that the world and the noise of people fell away to nothing.
02:25And the only living thing in the ruins was this man walking toward me.
02:28Today, as it happened, was the last day of the three-month deadline I'd given myself the day I took
02:34this job.
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