My brothers visit constantly.
Too much, honestly.
Noah “happened to be in the area” four times in the first month, which is not a thing that happens to a man who runs an international security firm.
Leo sends absurd amounts of fresh seafood through his own logistics company “as a test of the cold chain,” which we all know is a lie.
Julian calls every Sunday.
Marcus taught me forensic accounting basics over a long winter, “so no one ever hides anything from you again,” and I found I loved it — the way numbers can’t lie if you know how to make them talk.
I’m training for it now.
At thirty-five, I’m becoming a forensic investigator, specializing in financial abuse — the quiet kind, the kind that hides inside marriages and families and looks, from the outside, like a lucky woman who has everything.
I know that woman.
I was her.
Now I find her, in other people’s lives, and I help her get out with the evidence in hand.
Caleb says I’m the most dangerous Sterling of all, because I look like I’d never hurt anyone.
He means it as the highest compliment our family gives.
I saw Isaac one last time, at a hearing, near the end.
He looked smaller. They always do, once the money’s gone and you can finally see the man who was standing inside it.
“You destroyed my family,” he said to me, in the hallway, with a guard nearby.
I thought about the ballroom.
