The old life — the grand deals, the high-rise apartment, the exhausting, endless, doomed project of trying to buy the love of people who had only ever seen me as an open checkbook — felt like a nightmare that had happened to some other man, in some other, colder country.

Chapter 20 — Safe From the Cold

My phone chimed on the small table beside the swing — a notification from my legal team in New York.

I picked it up, because I have never been able to leave a document unread, and I glanced through it there in the warm light.

Stephanie had been released on supervised probation after serving fourteen months.

Under the terms, thirty-five percent of her wages from an entry-level clerical job at a logistics warehouse in Albany were being garnished, automatically, to pay the restitution she owed to Wendy and to Leo.