The Names in Adrian's Vault

Ninety-one names in a dead man's ledger. Hers is the last one. Delphine Marchetti audits dead men's estates. It's clean, precise work — until she opens the Valmont vault and finds a ledger with her own name in it, written in a hand she doesn't recognize, next to a price she was never paid. Behind the ledger stand three brothers: Lucien, who offered her money to look away. Émile, who offered to publish. Séverin, who wrote her name down in the first place. Her mother was a Valmont blood-wife. Thrown out. Pregnant. The estate owes her family ninety-one years and interest. Delphine does not burn the ledger. She does not sell it. She reads it, sues the Valmont estate in the Elder Court, and writes her own statute for what comes after. They wanted a name in a book. They'll get one in a contract.