Her voice was very small.

“Because Sabina says we’re bad.

She says we make you stressed.

She says if we tell you things, you’ll send us to the school in Switzerland where the girls don’t come home.”

Chadworth closed his eyes.

There it was.

There was the whole architecture of it, spoken in a six-year-old’s vocabulary.

Not just cruelty — containment. A closed loop.