“Because he needed everyone in the county looking at you,” Damian said, “while he covered his own tracks.” Flynn, the forensic trail showed, had accumulated enormous secret gambling debts in Dallas.

When his father began to notice discrepancies in the corporate accounts, Flynn had reached for the nearest available shield — the sole accountant with daily administrative credentials, a single mother with no powerful friends — and he had thrown her under the wheels to save himself.

Damian had expected relief to break across Mabel’s face.

What broke across it instead was tears, but not tears of relief.

They were tears of pure, incandescent rage.

“Four years,” she said, her chest heaving.