She crouched in front of my chained son with a plate of cold food and a smile that never reached her eyes, and what she said into that recording was worse, in its way, than anything her hands had done — because it was so calm.

“This is your last chance, my love,” she said, pleasant as a hostess. “You sign tonight, and all of us can finally rest.”

“I’m not signing anything,” Levi said.

“Then I suppose we’ll just keep going until your hand learns to cooperate.” She set the plate down out of his reach, stood, smoothed her dress, and went back up the stairs to her guests as though she’d done nothing more than check on a sleeping child.

I stayed in the dark with my fists clenched and the countdown to the new year starting up over our heads, and I made myself think instead of feel, because feeling was going to get us both killed, and thinking was the only thing I had ever been better at than most men.

Chapter 5 — What Levi Told Me

The moment her heels reached the top of the stairs, I came out. And Levi told me the thing that changed the entire shape of the night — the thing his wife had never bothered to learn in all their years of marriage, because she had never been interested in anything but the lifestyle.