I picked up the titanium key.
I picked up the broken frame of my family.
I walked down the central hallway of the agency.
I didn’t knock on the frosted glass.
I drove my right Red Wing boot directly into the center seam of the double mahogany doors with two hundred pounds of linear kinetic force:
KABOOM.
The heavy glass doors did not swing open; the brass latch sheared clean out of the jamb, the two panels slamming inward against the drywall stops with concussive, deafening violence:
CRASH.
The ten men sitting around the thirty-foot slab of polished old-growth walnut leaped out of their leather swivel chairs as if a high-explosive mortar shell had breached the ceiling.
Champagne flutes shattered across the mahogany; crystal ice buckets overturned, spilling chilled Dom Pérignon and ice cubes across four hundred pages of legal acquisition contracts:
“WHAT THE HELL?!” Nick Sterling shrieked, backing toward the panoramic window, his bespoke sports coat catching on the arm of his executive chair:
