Kelvin could request favors within the administration easily, as those marionette strings looked remarkably like lines of ink that read 'Pay to the Order of'.

Every loving, endearing, romance of language he published in the newspapers about the haunted mansion had only been to lower her guard. To weaken her. To lure her. To keep it from being demolished before he got the chance to bleed her of everything she'd ever been worth.

He smiled at her, the same smile stapled to the mask of every career politician.

A stock photograph of a smiling couple was meant, presumably, to bring comfort to the brochure-reader. If the faux couple being paid to grin while staring slightly off to the right could be happy, so could you.

The driver had recently scraped an 'AMRAK is Love' decal from his back window, leaving a sticky residue of his former beliefs.