Don’t you dare call an ambulance and ruin this party with flashing lights!” My father dragged my bleeding, broken body into the shadows while my spine shattered on the marble, unaware that his stolen sixty-thousand-dollar corporate fraud would soon land him in federal prison.

“Arthur Vance, you compromised the safety of the public infrastructure of this state through your fraudulent shell corporations, putting hundreds of rail workers at risk. But far worse than your corporate greed was your absolute moral depravity on the night of August fourteenth. You treated your own daughter’s broken body as an inconvenient piece of trash to be hidden beneath the stairs so that your web of lies would not unravel.”

The judge leaned forward. “On the federal counts of wire fraud and infrastructure tampering, you have already been sentenced to ten years. On the state charges of Criminal Neglect and Tampering with Evidence, I sentence you to an additional twelve years in the Illinois Department of Corrections, to run consecutively. You will not see freedom until you are an old man,

Mr. Vance.”

Arthur’s knees buckled. Two bailiffs caught him by the armpits, holding him upright—a poetic, pathetic echo of the way he had dragged me across the marble floor.

“Una Vance,” the judge continued, shifting his gaze to my mother, who was trembling uncontrollably, her rosary beads clicking against her plastic prison bracelet. “Your duty as a mother was completely subsumed by your obsession with social status and material appearances. You actively participated in the concealment of a critically injured human being. I sentence you to six years in state prison.”

Una let out a high-pitched wail, collapsing into her chair, burying her face in her cuffed hands.

Finally, the judge looked down at Deline.

Deline was trembling so violently that her teeth chattered audibly in the quiet room.

Her skin was sallow, her vanity stripped away, leaving only a terrified, broken twenty-eight-year-old girl who had believed her beauty gave her a license to destroy.

“Deline Vance, your actions were not the result of a momentary lapse in judgment. They were a calculated, malicious act of aggravated violence fueled by petty vanity and social media obsession. You attempted to permanently cripple your own sister for the sake of internet notoriety.”

The judge picked up his pen.

“On the count of Aggravated Battery causing Great Bodily Harm, I sentence you to fourteen years at the Logan Correctional Center. Furthermore, upon your release, all earnings, royalties, or financial compensation derived from any media, publishing, or online content relating to these crimes will be permanently garnished and remitted to the victim as part of a restitution order totaling one point eight million dollars.

”

“Fourteen years?” Deline shrieked, her voice tearing through the courtroom in absolute hysterics. “No! I can’t go to prison! I’m twenty-eight! My life is over! Sloan! Sloan, tell him! Tell him you forgive me!”

She lunged toward the railing separating the well of the court from the gallery, her cuffed hands reaching out toward me.

“Sloan! Look at me! Tell them to stop!”

I did not move. I did not blink.

Two female correctional officers seized Deline by her arms, twisting her around and dragging her toward the heavy steel holding door behind the bench. Her sneakers squeaked frantically against the linoleum floor, leaving scuff marks as she fought against the guards, screaming my name over and over until the heavy steel door slammed shut behind her, cutting off her voice forever.

Silence descended upon the courtroom.

Beside me, Merrick let out a long, slow breath. He reached out, his hand wrapping gently, securely around mine.

“It’s over, Sloan,” he whispered.

I looked at the scuff marks on the floor where my sister had been dragged away.

Chap 10

Six months later.

Chicago.

The wind off Lake Michigan in late March was a brutal, roaring beast, carrying the scent of thawing ice, iron, and deep water. It whipped across the construction platform of the new fifty-story mixed-use tower rising above the Chicago River at forty miles per hour.

Three hundred and eighty feet in the air, the world was composed of raw structural elements: wide-flange steel beams, orange safety netting, high-strength tension cables, and the endless gray expanse of the city below.

I stood on the central catwalk of the primary tower crane—a German-engineered Liebherr 542 HC-L luffing jib crane.

I was wearing heavy steel-toed work boots, reinforced Carhartt work trousers, a high-visibility harness with twin self-retracting lanyards clipped securely to the overhead static line, and a white hard hat emblazoned with the logo of my new independent firm: *Vance Structural Forensics & Engineering.*

Beneath my jacket, I no longer wore a molded plastic orthosis.