Some cages are built out of everything you ever wanted.

Martin Vance has just made partner at his father's law firm, fifty two floors above the city. He has a new house, a wife who believes him when he says they are fine, and a secret: a debt to a courteous man named Carl Weeks, who does not break legs. He breaks futures.

This summer the firm hands him a program for high school students, and with it Cason: seventeen, brilliant, and wired the way Martin is. When Charles Singleteary, who wanted Martin's title, starts teaching Cason to win at any cost, Martin must decide what he will risk to stand between them.

And somewhere in the firm's archive is an envelope Martin carried for his father when he was twenty three, and has spent nine years refusing to remember.

Victory's Cage is Part 2 of the Shadows of Contempt series: a story about a fast, anxious mind, the price of keeping secrets, and how hard it is to tell the whole truth when part of it would be easier. It works with or without Part 1.

This Classroom Edition was written for Spotted Bloom Education, for readers ages 14 to 18. It is built to be read a chapter at a time, alone or in a group, in classrooms, afterschool programs, book clubs and families. Every chapter ends with four tools: Keywords to Know, Reading Questions, Think Deeper, and Reflect and Respond. Its themes are neurodivergence, anxiety and emotional regulation, decision-making, consequences, and omission.