There was a bitter justice in Rourke being the one who ended them, and I had made sure it would be, because it was the fitting shape of the thing.

The Langfords’ entire scheme had rested on him — on the trust I’d placed in him, the access he’d sold, the intelligence only he could provide.

He had been the keystone of their operation, the single load-bearing traitor without whom none of it worked.

And so I had gone after him first, and hardest, and offered him the one thing a cornered man cannot refuse: a slightly smaller catastrophe in exchange for everyone else’s.

The man who had sold my daughter to save his career now sold the Langfords to save what remained of his life, and in doing so he pulled out the keystone he had spent two years being.

The family that had bought his loyalty learned, at the worst possible moment, that loyalty which can be bought can also be sold, and that a man who betrays his commander for money will betray his paymasters for a lighter sentence without a flicker of hesitation.