Serena stepped forward, her voice high and breathless as she reached for my coat sleeve.

“Elena, please,” Serena said.

“Think about how this looks in the newspaper.

Think about what people at the club are saying.”

I pulled my arm back gently and smoothed my skirt down over my knee.

“Julian took six hundred fifty-one thousand dollars from a dying man,” I said.

“He forged my signature on a three-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar loan application.”

“It was a business misunderstanding,” Julian snapped, suddenly looking up, his voice loud enough to echo off the high plaster ceiling.