A Stifling Silence

The seventy-second-floor penthouse was cloaked in heavy, suffocating silence. Outside, a late-autumn fog rolled off the Hudson River, obscuring the glittering spires of Lower Manhattan and casting the living salon in ghostly shadows. Clara sat on the edge of the oversized velvet sofa before the linear travertine fireplace. On the low coffee table lay her leather briefcase, inside of which the toxic blackmail dossier from Marcus Sterling burned like radioactive…