My stepsister kicked me in the ribs so hard I could barely breathe, while my stepmother calmly said, “Break her arm too,” and my father just stood there and watched.

Two days later, the sentencing proceedings concluded.

The courtroom was silent as Judge Carter read the penalties into the permanent federal record.

“Lenora Vance,” the judge announced, her voice echoing off the high plaster ceilings. “For the cold-blooded murder of Clara Vance, and for the subsequent campaign of extortion, bribery, and violence, you are hereby sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. You will serve this sentence at the United States Penitentiary, Hazelton, under maximum-security conditions. Furthermore, under federal civil asset forfeiture laws, every asset held in your name, in the Vance family trusts, and in your foreign corporate entities is hereby stripped, liquidated, and transferred into the Clara Vance Foundation for Battered Women and Children.”

Lenora didn't move. She stood like a marble statue, but her hands were trembling so violently that the belly-chains rattled against her belt.

“As for you, Brooke Vance,” Judge Carter turned her cold eyes toward the sobbing younger woman. “You were raised in privilege, insulated by wealth, and you chose to wield that privilege as a weapon of cruelty. Your attack on an active-duty Marine inside her own quarters was an act of craven malice. You are hereby sentenced to twenty-two years in federal custody, without the possibility of early release.”

“No! No! Please!” Brooke shrieked as the two burly female marshals took her by the upper arms and hoisted her to her feet. “Maya! Tell them! Tell them you forgive me! You got everything back! Maya!”

They dragged her through the side door, her boots dragging uselessly along the carpet, her screams fading down the holding corridor until the heavy steel door slammed shut.

Then came Elena.

The military judge advocate read her sentence into the record: *Reduction to the rank of Private (E-1), total forfeiture of all pay and allowances, twenty-five years' confinement at Fort Leavenworth, and a Dishonorable Discharge from the United States Marine Corps.*

As the MPs turned Elena to lead her out, she stopped. She looked at me through the gallery railing.

Her face was swollen, her eyes dead.

“Maya,” she whispered.

I stood up. I walked to the wooden railing, looking at the woman who had once been my sister-in-arms.

“Why did you do it, Elena?” I asked softly. “Really. Why?”

Elena swallowed hard. A single tear cut through the dust on her cheek.

“Because I was tired of being cold, Maya,” she said, her voice barely audible over the hum of the courtroom ventilation. “I was tired of being broken and having nothing to show for it. I thought… I thought if I had the money, I wouldn't have to remember the sand anymore.”

“The money doesn't wash off the dirt, Elena,” I said.

She nodded once, slowly. “I know that now.”

The MPs took her by the elbows and led her away.

I turned back to the prosecution table. Captain Wright walked over, carrying a thin leather briefcase. He opened it and pulled out an official document bearing the gold seal of the State of North Carolina.

“It’s done, Staff Sergeant,” Wright said, handing me the paper.

I looked down at it.

*VANCE PHARMACEUTICAL & LOGISTICS HOLDINGS: FULL RESTITUTION AND CORPORATE RESTRUCTURING ORDER.*

Clara Vance’s company—the company my mother had built from a single delivery van into an eighty-million-dollar supply chain—was now fully in my hands. The board had been dissolved. Lenora’s cronies had been purged.

Every patent, every warehouse, every trust fund my mother had created was restored to Clara’s only daughter.

“What are you going to do with it?” Wright asked. “You’re an heiress now, Maya. You never have to sleep in a barracks again. You never have to take another order.”

I tucked the document into the breast pocket of my dress blue coat, right behind my ribbons.

“My mother didn't build that company so someone could sit in a penthouse and drink champagne,” I said. “She built it to help people who couldn't fight for themselves.”

I adjusted my white cover, setting it squarely over my brow.