They celebrated carefully, the way people learn to celebrate after too many months of bracing for bad news to arrive instead — Roan's confirmation two days later that the board had voted, by a narrow but real margin, to accept the settlement Ezra had proposed, Cole's own recommendation apparently carrying more weight than either of them had expected from a man they'd spent months treating as an implacable enemy.

"It's not over entirely," Ezra cautioned, reading the confirmation message twice before allowing himself to believe it. "There's paperwork, formalities, the actual severing of my obligations still has to be finalized properly. But the immediate danger — the team Cole nearly...