The Vances had legal teams, and political friends, and pockets deep enough to make the truth an expensive and lonely thing to insist on.

Mabel had a newborn baby and nothing else.

She lost her career overnight.

Neighbors began crossing the street.

No business in three counties would let a woman branded a thief anywhere near their money, and so the sharpest accountant any of them had ever known ended up scrubbing floors, sewing school uniforms, and taking whatever grueling odd work would keep milk in her daughter’s cup.

Damian stood in that general store and felt a slow, dark rage rise in his chest — the first honest rage he had felt in years, in a life that had trained him to feel very little.