The troopers snapped the cuffs on.

As they turned Victoria toward the doors, she looked back at me over her shoulder, and everything that had ever made her formidable was gone. What was left was small, and frightened, and stripped bare.

“Elise,” she whispered. “Please. We’re sisters.”

I stood straight and pulled my coat around me, and I felt something I had not felt in twelve years — the plain, weightless quiet of a person who is no longer being worked on by anyone.

“We were sisters, Victoria,” I said. “But somewhere back in that living room, you decided a house was worth more than any of us. You chose endurance over love. And this is where the game ends.”

I turned my back on her while they were still leading her away, her voice breaking apart down the long corridor behind me until the doors swallowed it.