The board of Crew Royale met on the fortieth floor every second Thursday, in a long room with a glass ceiling and a table made from a single slab of black walnut.
Damien had sat at the head of that table for seven years. He knew every chair by heart. He knew who always arrived early and who always arrived late. He knew whose handshake was firm and whose was damp, who hated being interrupted, who fell asleep around the third agenda item. They were not his friends. But they were, in some strange way, his family.
This Thursday, he looked at them differently.
Eleven faces. Eleven cups of coffee. Eleven leather folders, squared exactly at the edge of the table. And Damien sat at the head, in a charcoal suit, wondering which of the eleven was a snake.
"Gentlemen," he said. "Lady. Shall we begin?"
