Chapter 11

Nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine red roses. He filled the entire forty-second floor with them. The elevator lobby, the corridors, my office, the boardroom, the fire stairs. The building manager filed a complaint. Ryder paid the fine in advance and had it framed. He was standing in the middle of it in a suit he'd clearly slept in, holding one single white one, looking more nervous than a man closing a two-billion-dollar deal has any right to look. "Now it's a confession," he said. The...