Pittsburgh City Hall, third floor. The Mayor's Office.
The lights were off.
The only light came from the city glow filtering through the window, mingled with the curtain of rain that hadn't stopped all day.
Martin Carter Wright sat alone behind the massive desk.
The usual mountains of paperwork were gone. All that remained was a single, thin sheet of paper.
It was the final projected statistics, delivered with trembling hands by his campaign manager, Scott Reed, just ten minutes ago.
Reid hadn't even dared to meet his gaze. He'd put the paper down and fled as if escaping.
As a veteran who had clawed his way through Pittsburgh politics for years, he only needed a single glance at the data from a few key districts to know the outcome.
The South District—the slum he'd once dismissed as a garbage dump—had now become his tomb.
Voter turnout there was as high as eighty-five percent, and Leo Wallace had taken nearly one hundred percent of the vote.
