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The limo pulled up to the curb at the entrance of Chairman Hayes’s Long Island mansion, and Nadia dug deep in search of an untapped reserve of energy. Her throat scratched with the early warning signs of a cold, and if she had any choice she’d be cuddled up in bed with a good book and a cup of hot tea, not spending the next four or five hours at a wedding reception. However, this was the event of the season, and she’d heard her mother’s lecture on the duties of an Executive enough times to know it by heart. Attending state events was on the top of that list, so staying home was not an option.

A liveried attendant hurried to open the limo’s door. Gerald and Esmeralda Lake, Nadia’s parents, exited first, posing and smiling for the photographers while Nadia stayed momentarily hidden behind the limo’s tinted windows. She wrinkled her nose at the stately mansion, hating the place. Chairman Hayes had built it shortly after Paxco had bought out what was then the state of New York. It had been the first in a long line of dominoes that had eventually led to the transformation of the United States of America into today’s Corporate States. The mansion was a monument to the Chairman’s ego, not an actual home meant to be lived in.

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