The warden straightened his spine, a moment of rare strength. “I do.”

“And if I wished to express some feeling of gratitude or remorse? If I told you that, would you believe me?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“I’m saying that in spite of our difficult start, you’ve been both fair and responsive. I’d like to reward that behavior.” X kept his gaze impassive. “How about three million dollars each for you, your wife, and your oldest son? Plus another five for Trevor, to compensate for the limp.”

The warden gaped; he couldn’t help it. “Fourteen million dollars?”

“Let’s make it twenty.”

The idea of such wealth made the warden feel faint. It meant a fresh start for him and his wife, better therapy for Trevor …

“I will require one last thing,” X said.

The warden swallowed the last morsels of pride and honor. “Tell me what you need.”

X did just that. He was very specific. “I assume you can manage the details?”

The warden said he could, and why not? After all the things he’d broken, all the men and lives and laws …

“I almost forgot,” he said. “Jason French has a visitor, his younger brother. Shall I turn him away?”

“Why would you do that?” X showed the broken teeth at last. “After all, there is nothing more important than family.”

That had once been true for X. As a child, he’d adored his parents. Even the younger sister made a fond memory, with her plump, round face and the way she’d liked to giggle. Those early years were like a dream: the mansions and travel, the great yachts and the fine chefs. His family’s special nature had been obvious from the beginning, clear in the respect men had for his father, the way they did as they were told, but stole glances at the beautiful, young wife. She would read stories to X of princes in faraway lands, and X was supposed to love those tales—he saw it in his mother’s eyes—but none of those make-believe princes lived a better life than X. The world was a kingdom, his father a king.

When X was eight years old, he burned his finger on a birthday candle, and the fascination with fire began. At first, it was a small thing: matches and cardboard and melted plastic. By his next birthday, though, the dreams he had were not of candles but of conflagration. He used his father’s gold lighter to start his first real fire, a blaze that took ten acres of woodland from the Charleston estate. The second fire was a neighbor’s car. Fifty thousand dollars, they said, a collectible; and he’d done it with a single match.

Conflagration.

Control.