Vanessa Sterling hadn't slept in three days.
She sat in her apartment with the lights off and the ankle monitor heavy on her leg and her lawyer's words echoing in her head from their call six hours ago.
"Twenty years minimum if Vance's testimony holds. Conspiracy to commit kidnapping. Federal charges. They have the burner phones, the financial records, the emails. Vanessa, they have everything. The only card you have left to play is cooperation."
Twenty years.
She was thirty-two years old and facing twenty years in federal prison because Damian Cross had promised her that the plan was foolproof. That they'd covered every angle. That Asher would disappear and Kael would come back to her and no one would ever trace it back to them.
Eight days ago she'd believed him.
