Frances had made Doreen in her own image, and then was genuinely shocked, on that patio, to be looked at by that image with her own cold, transactional eyes.

The people she had spent her life buying turned out to have understood the terms of the sale better than she had.

They had never been loyal.

They had only ever been paid.

Chapter 10 — The Law Arrives

“It doesn’t matter who knew what,” I said, cutting off their bickering.