Chapter 9 — Twenty-Three Calls

Luca called twenty-three times before noon.

I did not answer a single one.

I was in a downtown hotel suite, registered under my maiden name, with an ice pack pressed against my cracked ribs and my laptop open on the desk in front of me, and I was working.

Methodically, the way I work.

I was transmitting encrypted copies of my files to three separate recipients, each of whom would open a different front in the same war: my senior divorce attorney, the detective who had been assigned to the domestic-assault report I had filed from the hospital, and the corporate fraud unit of the regional bank that held the family company’s accounts.

There is a particular clarity that comes over me when I am building a case.