Sabrina had been another tool: Renata had known Nathan still carried a torch, and she had brought Sabrina near, and fed the jealousy, and let it curdle, and when Sabrina agreed to the plan, Renata had let her believe the prize was Nathan.

The real prize was my death, and the inheritance war it would start.

And Nathan had done their work with his own hands, never once understanding whose hands were moving his.

What steadied me, learning all of it, was not rage — I had run out of rage somewhere back in that hospital bed — but a strange, clarifying respect for how completely the thing had been built.

Renata had not improvised.