The black Rolls Royce Phantom pulled away and the engine’s low, modulated growl blended seamlessly into the evening clamour of the city, traffic horns blaring like wounded beasts, hawkers screaming their last sales of the day, the endless, crushing tide of humanity on the streets. But inside the cabin, that world was vacuum sealed into irrelevance. The car was a moving fortress of triple layered smoked glass, buttery leather, and air so precisely chilled it should have been freezing. Yet, the atmosphere within the passenger compartment was anything but cool. It was a pressure cooker of unspoken violence, damp with the scent of old sex, fresh fear, and a jealousy so potent it burned like acid on the tongue.