She stood at the head of the long mahogany table, adjusting her blazer, and her voice when she found it was bright and brittle.

“Alexander?

What is the meaning of this interruption?”

I set a thick leather binder down on the table.

“It’s over, Maya.”

Behind her, Ryan started for the executive side door, and two plainclothes officers stepped into the doorway and closed a pair of handcuffs around his wrists before he had taken three steps.

Maya’s brightness shattered all at once into screaming — that I was a paranoid lunatic, that I had always been unstable, that I was betraying my own blood, my own family.

I stood and let it wash over me, and I understood, listening to her, how she had used that one word, family, as a shield her entire life, holding it up in front of every cruel and selfish thing she had ever done, daring anyone to strike through it.