“Julian isn’t calling anyone,” I said, kissing the top of her head. “It’s over.”

Nora walked over, kicking Gareth’s discarded gun into the water before kneeling beside the groaning man to apply handcuffs.

“Sirens are two minutes out,” Nora said, looking up at me. “The state police took the coordinates from my phone’s GPS.”

I held Clara tight, the cold wind blowing through the gaps in the wooden walls, but for the first time in years, I felt warm.

***

The weeks that followed were a blur of fluorescent lights, marble corridors, and the smell of stale coffee.

Clara was treated at a private clinic under twenty-four-hour guard, her physical wounds healing much faster than the emotional ones.

I spent my days in the federal building downtown, sitting across from prosecutors in a room that smelled of old paper and floor wax.

The hard drives we recovered from the Thorne estate basement were a goldmine.

Every transaction, every shell company, and every bribe paid to local officials was laid out in digital ink.

I spent sixteen hours a day organizing the spreadsheets, tracing the flow of stolen money from real estate developments into offshore trusts.