As the sun came up over the pines, Ivan pulled off his headset with a grim, satisfied smile. “He just moved the money, Boss. The feds have the wire fraud.

They have all of it.”

I looked out through the shattered front door, listening to a siren echo through the valley.

The trap had shut.

Chapter 3: The Dawn of Reckoning

The first blow to the Sterlings wasn’t handcuffs. It was the silence of the town.

For thirty years, every disaster, every scandal, every broken bone in Sterling Falls had been erased with a hushed phone call, a hand-delivered envelope, or a threat whispered in a grocery aisle.