In New Orleans, the heat doesn’t just make you sweat. It makes you sour. Cherry Grayson knows that better than anyone. As a boutique attorney for the city’s most prestigious families, she’s seen the jasmine-scented rot behind the wrought iron. But Cherry isn’t interested in justice. She’s interested in the Audit. Thirty years ago, her mother went to the electric chair, her crime etched forever in a crimson stain on the marble foyer. Cherry learned the lesson well: violence isn’t the problem — evidence is. From her climate-controlled sanctuary on Royal Street, Cherry treats human lives like entries in a ledger. When the Sterlings and the Millers, two couples bound by greed and cross-wired by infidelity, walk into her office, they think they’re hiring a lawyer to protect their fortunes. They don’t realize they’ve stepped into a collision. As a storm swells over the Crescent City and the bodies begin to fall, Cherry prepares her final inventory. Because in Cherry’s world there are no victims, only specimens. And by the time the New Orleans Police Department arrives, the books won’t just be balanced. They’ll be closed.