BLOOD'S POV
I sat at the head of the long table with my walking stick resting against the armrest beside me, the Cohiba burning slowly between my fingers, its smoke curling upward in the still air of the private meeting room. The men seated around the table were not men most people ever got the opportunity to meet in person.
That was intentional. They were people who operated at the level that didn't attend visible meetings or conduct business in places that could be described afterward by someone who had been present.
They moved through the world quietly, leaving no photographs and very few paper trails, their names existing only in the kind of conversations that happened behind closed doors in rooms exactly like this one.
