Mellory Financial was one of the city's true powerhouses, its headquarters planted squarely in the bustling downtown core. From the twenty-eighth floor, Marcus looked out over the metropolis below, watching the endless flow of traffic and people weave between glass-and-steel towers that glinted under the sun.
The view hit him harder than he expected. From up here, everything felt different. Smaller. Manageable. No wonder people chased higher ground, chased authority and vantage points like this. Standing above it all carried a quiet, intoxicating thrill.
He lifted his gaze to the sky, a clean, brilliant blue that felt almost close enough to touch. Still, twenty-eight floors were not the peak. Nearby, more than a dozen buildings soared past fifty stories, and farther off stood a tower that reached eighty floors into the air. Marcus imagined standing at the very top, looking down on everything like a hawk surveying its territory.
