Sennett tried to become the hero of it.

Of course he did.

He went to the prosecutors weeping, casting himself as the tragic victim — coerced, manipulated, a good man swept up in his wife’s instability and Perpetua’s schemes.

It might even have worked, if he had been cleverer about the paper.

But in his six months of confidence, sure the fog around me would never lift, he had signed his name to too many things.

The vendor contracts he’d used to siphon money bore his signature.