Douglas arrived at the meeting exactly as I knew he would, blustering, certain he could intimidate whatever fool had bought his loans. Then he walked in and saw me. The woman he had never bothered to notice, the mother of the man he had put on a bathroom floor, sitting at the head of the table with Attorney Duran beside her and a folder of his entire failing empire in front of her. Adrian stood near the door where I had asked him to wait, still in his wrinkled shirt.

Douglas tried to laugh, the same laugh from the bathroom. “You? You cleaned houses. Where does someone like you get the money to buy my debt?” I folded my hands on the table, exactly the way he liked to fold his, and I let him sit with the question. Then I answered it, and the smile drained from his face for the second time in a week.