For Freedom

A magnate’s glittering world fractures when one midnight call—Stratton’s oily purr claiming he’s stolen Edith—snaps the leash on Robert Wayne’s composure. Deserting the boardroom crucible, Wayne races into the Hudson fog; a single muzzle-flash later, Stratton’s blood soaks his tuxedo and the tabloids roar for a scapegoat. Steel bars replace silk curtains, yet the war raging across the Atlantic offers the tycoon a devil’s bargain: don khaki, trade convict stripes for battlefield mud, and perhaps scrub the scarlet letter from his name. Somewhere between a Normandy foxhole and a field-dressing tent, Mary Fenton’s violin-voice threads through the cordite, promising that even a man shackled by scandal might yet be unshackled by grace. Armistice fireworks illuminate a Long Island ballroom where Edith, glass in trembling hand, finally exorcises the lie that sent her brother to hell; the orchestra swells, confetti drifts like shrapnel-snow, and Wayne—face gaunt, medal glinting—must decide whether absolution from others can ever equal the absolution he owes himself.