This was what loyalty actually looked like, and it had never once cost me three thousand dollars a month or a signature on a paper.

It looked like a man who knew precisely how much I was worth, down to the last decimal, and had never treated me as a fraction of a cent more or less human for it.

In the disguise I had spent two years starved for exactly this and looking for it in exactly the wrong place.

It had been in the front seat of my own car the entire time.

We drove toward the most secure gated neighborhood in the hills.

Chapter 7 — Home