The courthouse smelled like every government building Ivy had ever set foot in, floor wax and old paper and something underneath it that felt like nine years of other people's worst days, and she sat in the front row with her hands clasped so tight her knuckles had gone white, waiting for a judge to decide whether her father got to come home.

Sterling wasn't beside her. He'd wanted to be, had argued about it the night before until Ivy reminded him, gently, that the shareholder vote needed him in that boardroom more than she needed him in this one, and that she'd survived every other hard thing in her...