The Ravencroft penthouse stretched like a gilded crown atop the Manhattan skyline, its windows reflecting the morning sun in shards of amber and gold.
Hotel staff scurried across Italian marble floors with the practiced efficiency of worker ants serving their queen, each movement calibrated with precise reverence—glasses positioned exactly three inches from plate edges, sterling silver polished to mirror-like perfection, Egyptian cotton napkins folded into immaculate swans.
The air itself seemed choreographed, perfumed with the subtle aromatics of saffron-infused breakfast delicacies and fresh-cut orchids imported from Singapore at dawn.
