Lexi thought: None of you know me. Not even my husband. I don’t ‘deserve’ his love. But I fought for it, and I won it, and I’m damned if I’m going to let anyone take it away from me. Least of all you.

Now most of the guests had gone. Lexi’s brother Robbie and his partner were still downstairs. So was Lexi’s baby daughter, Maxine, and the nanny. Any moment now Lexi’s husband would come looking for her. It was time to leave for their honeymoon.

It was time…

Lexi Templeton walked over to the window. Beyond the formal lawns of Cedar Hill House she could see the closely huddled white roofs of Dark Harbor, and behind them the dark, brooding sea. This evening the roiling water looked unusually ominous.

It’s waiting. One day it will swallow the island whole. A big wave will come and wipe everything out. As if none of this ever existed.

Two men in suits got out of their car and approached the security gate. Even before they pulled out their badges, Lext Templeton knew who they were. It was just like it said in the letter: ‘The police are on their way. You have no way out Alexandra. Not this time.’

Tears stung the back of Lexi’s eyes. She could hear her Aunt Eve’s voice as clearly as if she were still alive, taunting her, laden with spite. Was she right? Was this really it? The end of the game? After all Lexi’s struggles? She remembered a Dylan Thomas poem she’d learned at school: “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Damn right I’ll rage. I’ll not let that old witch beat me without a fight.

The cops were through the gate now. They were almost at the door.

Lexi Templeton took a deep breath and went downstairs to meet them.

After the Darkness Excerpt

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.

Greed is right.

Greed works.

Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Greed, in all of its forms—greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge—has marked the upward surge of mankind.

(Gordon Gekko, in Wall Street. 1987)

PROLOGUE

New York: December 15, 2009

The day of reckoning had arrived.

The Gods had demanded a sacrifice. A human sacrifice. In Ancient Roman Times, when the city was at war, captured enemy leaders would have been ritually strangled on the battlefield in front of a statue of Mars, the War God. Crowds of soldiers would have cheered, screaming not for justice but for vengeance. For blood.

This was not Ancient Rome. It was modern day New York, the beating heart of civilized America. But New York was also a city at war. It was a city full of suffering, angry people who needed somebody to blame for their pain. Today’s human sacrifice would be offered up in the clinical, ordered surroundings of the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building. But it would be none the less bloody for that.

Normally, the TV crews and ghoulish hordes of spectators only showed up for murder trials. Today’s defendant, Grace Brookstein, had not murdered anybody. Not directly anyway. Yet there were plenty of New Yorkers who would have rejoiced to see Grace Brookstein sent to the electric chair. Her son-of-a-bitch husband had cheated them. Worse, he had cheated justice. Lenny Brookstein – may he rot in hell – had laughed in the face of the Gods. Well now the Gods must be appeased.

The man responsible for appeasing them – District Attorney Angelo Michele, representative of the people – looked across the courtroom at his intended victim. The woman sitting at the defendant’s table, hands clasped calmly in front of her, did not look like a criminal. A slight, attractive blonde in her early twenties, Grace Brookstein had the sweet, angelic features of a child. A competitive gymnast in her teens, she still carried herself with a dancer’s poise, back ramrod straight, hand gestures measured and fluid. Grace Brookstein was fragile. Delicate. Beautiful. She was the sort of woman that men instinctively wanted to protect. Or rather she would have been, had she not stolen $75 billion in the largest, most catastrophic fraud in US history.

The collapse of Quorum, the hedge fund founded by Lenny Brookstein and co-owned by his young wife, had dealt a fatal blow to the already crippled American economy. Between them, the Brooksteins had ruined families, destroyed entire industries and brought the once great financial center of New York to its knees. They had stolen more than Madoff, but that wasn’t what hurt the most. Unlike Madoff, the Brooksteins had stolen not from the rich, but from the poor. Their victims were ordinary people: the elderly, small charities, hard-working, blue-collar families already struggling to get by. At least one young father made destitute by Quorum had shot himself, unable to bear the shame of seeing his children turned out on the streets. Not once had Grace Brookstein displayed so much as a shred of remorse.

Of course, there were those who argued that Grace Brookstein was not guilty of the crimes that had brought her to this courtroom. That it was Lenny Brookstein, not his wife, who had masterminded the Quorum Fraud. District Attorney Angelo Michele loathed such people. Bleeding heart liberals. Fools! You think the wife didn’t know what was going on? She knew. She knew everything. She just didn’t care. She spent your pension funds, your life savings, your kids’ college money…just look at her now! Is she dressed like a woman who gives a shit that you lost your home?

Over the course of the trial, the press had made much of Grace Brookstein’s courtroom attire. Today, for the verdict, she had chosen a white Chanel shift ($7,600), matching Boucle jacket ($5,200), Louis Vuitton pumps ($1,200) and purse ($18,600), and an exquisite floor length mink hand-made for her in Paris, an anniversary present from her husband. The New York Post early edition was already on newsstands. Above a full length shot of Grace Brookstein arriving at Court 14 the front page headline screamed: ‘LET THEM EAT CAKE!’

District Attorney Angelo Michele intended to make sure that Grace Brookstein’s cake-eating days were over. Enjoy those furs, Lady. This’ll be the last day you get to wear ‘em.

Angelo Michele was a tall, lean man in his mid-forties. He wore a plain, Brooks Brothers suit and his thick black hair slicked back til it gleamed on top of his head like a shiny black helmet. Angelo Michele was an ambitious man and a fearsome boss – all the junior DAs were terrified of him – but he was a good son. Angelo’s parents ran a pizza parlor in Brooklyn. Or they had done until Lenny Brookstein ‘lost’ their life savings and forced them into bankruptcy. Thank God Angelo earned good money. Without his income the Micheles would have been out on the streets in their old age, destitute like so many other hard-working Americans. As far as Angelo Michele was concerned, prison was too good for Grace Brookstein. But it was a start. And he was going to be the man who put her there.