Blood and Bylaws

In the rust-belt town of Ashwick, Meridia, hospital orderly Maria Vance carries the scar of a legal system that allowed a powerful law firm to steal her family's farm using a cold contractual loophole. When she witnesses a city commissioner murder an activist journalist over a toxic land development, Maria is swept into a brutal, multi-agency manhunt. Every pillar of the state—police, courts, and even the bankruptcy code—twists to protect the elite. On the run with a dead man's evidence, Maria must trust a conflicted young lawyer who discovers that the law is nothing but a weapon of the powerful, and that true conscience demands a blood price.