“No,” I replied softly, shaking my head.

“Dad just taught you how the game was played. You enthusiastically chose to become him.”

The agent seized her wrists, pulled them roughly behind her back, and locked the steel cuffs in place.

Celeste let out a high, thin wail that the crowd ignored entirely.

Across the room, my brother Preston tried to quietly slip through the kitchen service doors, but a fourth plainclothes agent stepped out of the shadows and tackled him against a stainless-steel prep counter before he could escape.

My mother had collapsed heavily into a gilded chiavari chair.