The bulldozer did not simply start. It awakened.

Deep inside the maximum-security federal penitentiary two hundred miles north of Nashville, the heavy steel doors of the maximum-security visiting block clicked open with a sterile, mechanical hum.

Julian Sterling sat at the metal consultation table, his orange jumpsuit wrinkled, his hair graying at the temples, his eyes hollowed out by months of unbroken isolation.

The heavy glass partition separated him from his visitor.

Sitting on the other side was not a lawyer, nor a federal prosecutor. It was Victoria Sterling-Cross.

Julian slowly picked up the telephone receiver, his hand shaking as he pressed it to his ear. "Victoria? What are you doing here? The guards aren't supposed to allow visitors from outside the immediate legal team."

Victoria looked at her disgraced cousin with an expression of profound, chilling disappointment. "My legal team is currently dismantling federal indictments, Julian. Yours is entirely nonexistent because you were too arrogant to realize that power requires discipline, not just greed."

Julian flushed red with sudden anger, slamming his palm against the glass partition. "Don't lecture me! If you had given me access to the overseas trust funds five years ago, none of this would have happened! You let me take the fall!"

"You fell because you tripped over an eighty-year-old farmer and a grandson with a fleet of gravel trucks," Victoria replied coldly, her voice devoid of any warmth. "You were a liability, Julian. And you remain one."

"Then why are you here?" Julian hissed, his eyes narrowing with desperate suspicion. "If you didn't come to bail me out, what do you want?"

Victoria leaned closer to the glass, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper that seemed to chill the air in the room.

"I'm here because my offshore syndicate needs a proxy inside the state prison system," Victoria said slowly. "A man with nothing left to lose, who knows every hidden bank account, every corrupt judge, and every secret land deed the Kincaids currently hold."