Roman looked at me, his dark eyes searching my face in the dim light of the phone screen.

“You don’t negotiate with these people, Lena,” he said. “They don’t keep promises.”

“They will keep this one,” I said, “because I have what they need to survive.”

I tapped the screen and dialed the number that had sent the video.

It rang once.

A dry, raspy voice answered on the second ring.

“Have you completed the transfer, Lena?” the voice asked.

It was Victor Vance, the head of the syndicate that had bought my father’s debts.

“No,” I said, my voice surprisingly firm. “And I won’t.”

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line.

“Then you know what happens to your mother,” Vance said.

“If you touch her,” I said, “I will delete the secondary key from the server.”

“You don’t have the authority to delete it,” he laughed.

“I memorized the destruction protocol my father built into the ledger,” I said.

I lied, but I made sure my voice did not shake.