Part 2

Five years earlier, Mara Bennett walked into Vale Capital through the employee entrance, wearing a secondhand blazer and carrying the kind of hunger that came from having to fight for every inch of her life.

She was twenty-seven, newly hired as junior legal counsel, and determined not to be intimidated by marble floors, private elevators, or the Manhattan skyline outside the fifty-second floor. She had survived night classes, scholarships, two jobs, a mother who died too soon, and a father who believed ambition was dangerous for women.

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