The Forfeit

In the hard-boiled tradition of Ed McBain, this novel transplants the forced sacrifice of Qing Grand Consort Abahai into a New York Chinatown high school. A trafficking network preys on impoverished girls from China, transforming them into “living tributes” for a criminal brotherhood. When a teenage scholarship student is marked as the next ritual sacrifice, she launches a desperate rebellion, while an 87th Precinct-style detective uncovers a secret society of elite students who mirror the power-hungry princes that ordered Abahai’s death. The campus is exposed not as a sanctuary, but as a brutal rehearsal for the blood-soaked rituals of adult power, where every friendship is a transaction and every hierarchy demands a sacrifice.