He was stripped of every financial license he held, ordered to pay more than four hundred thousand dollars in civil restitution, and sentenced to forty-eight months in a state correctional facility.

The man who had once loved to talk about his tailored suits and his corporate connections was, within a year, serving his time in a medium-security unit, his career finished, his wealth gone, his name a thing people said quietly and with disgust.

Danielle avoided serious prison time by turning state’s evidence against Blake in the fraud investigation — trading, at the very end, her partner in it all for her own skin, which told me everything about what had ever been between them.

But her life came apart in every way that was left.