The ballroom of the Langham had transformed.
Twenty-four hours earlier, it had hosted the Forum for Global Enterprise—crystal chandeliers, champagne flutes, the careful choreography of wealth greeting wealth. Now the chandeliers were dimmed, the tables arranged in tiered semicircles, the lighting focused on a single dais.
The Corporate Ethics Summit.
Elara stood in the wings, alone.
Through the gap in the curtain, she could see them. The men who ran the world, or believed they did. CEOs of multinationals. Private equity partners. Hedge fund principals. They filled the front three rows, their watches worth more than most people's homes, their faces arranged in expressions of polite skepticism.
She had attended forty-seven such events as Lucas Harrington's wife.
She had never spoken at one.
