What Jessi and Stephanie had never once respected — never even troubled to understand — was what I did for a living.

They thought of me as an executive.

A man who flew around the world in nice suits, signed important papers, and came home with money that they were entitled to a share of.

That was the whole of their understanding, and it suited them, because a man who is merely a source of money is a man you never have to take seriously as a threat.

In fact, I had built a risk-management company that specialized in corporate fraud investigations.

When money vanished from a bank, when the numbers at an insurance company stopped reconciling, when a multinational firm began to suspect that one of its own executives was quietly robbing it and lying about it, they called my team.