What cannot easily be restored is the five years two people spent hating each other for crimes neither of them committed, loving no one, alone, on opposite sides of a wall a third person built specifically to keep them there.

She did not just steal from the company.

She stole a family that had not yet been allowed to exist — a father from a son, a truth from a woman, five years from all of us — and she did it not in a moment of passion but coldly, deliberately, letter by intercepted letter, and slept well every night for five years while she did.

Prison, when it finally came for her, was almost beside the point.

The thing I most wanted back from Fiona Vance was the one thing no court could order her to return.

Chapter 17 — Follow the Money