I suggest you use them.” For a long, taut moment, Wendy Vance did not move, and I held my breath, and my daughter, and my fear.

And then something in the older woman’s face closed, like a door, as she recalculated, as she understood that her son was not bluffing, that the frightened boy she had come to reclaim had become a man who held her entire criminal empire in a secure file and was no longer afraid to use it.

Without another word, she turned, her heels clicking, and she gathered her leather-bound folder from the tray table, and she walked out of the room.

The door swung shut behind her.