We didn’t need to watch them sign.

We just needed to know the trap had snapped shut. As the doors slid closed, I watched my daughter. Her eyes weren’t broken anymore.

They weren’t burning for blood, either. They were something new and cold and certain. The victim who had run through the rain was gone.

In her place stood someone who would never be prey again.

Chapter 5: The Crucible

Six months is a blink in a lifetime, but it is an eternity when your entire world has collapsed. Preston took a plea to avoid the maximum sentence—the tape left him no room to run.

He was convicted of extortion, kidnapping, and aggravated assault, and he traded his Tom Ford suits for a state-issued uniform and a cell block full of men entirely unimpressed by his family name.

Every appeal his diminishing funds could buy was denied. The confession of judgment and the debt Dominic held stripped him of the last dollar he might have hidden. Beatrice fared no better.