The Serpent Returns: Justice Has Fangs

Claire Hayes' closest friend Vera Cross and her husband Gareth Mercer framed her for poisoning fruit from her own orchards. Claire was the richest woman in Jeston County when the case was brought. She was convicted and served ten years. Before any of that, driving through a storm, she had found a large black snake and a small white snake caught in a mudslide, pulled them out, and let both stay in her orchard. By the time she was released, Vera had taken the company and Claire's daughter Lila had been mistreated by Gareth. Claire was put to work hauling waste and treated with contempt wherever she went. The black snake she had saved came back to repay her, arriving alongside the chairman of the Liu family. What surfaced next was an older scheme reaching back into the Eastern Conglomerate, and a foreign operation breeding mutant snakes to take the longevity gene held by the Snake Lord.