“I’m not going to alienate him,” she said.

“I have him right where I want him.”

That single exchange destroyed the last lingering doubt in Marcus’s mind.

Sarah had not developed this scheme after their wedding, in some slow slide from love into greed.

She had targeted him long before they ever walked down the aisle.

And a background search that Victoria ran confirmed it beyond any argument.

Sarah and Julian had, three years earlier, co-managed a small real estate firm together in Boston, a fact Sarah had carefully omitted when she “randomly” recommended Julian’s company to her own husband.