The man had looked at his wife bleeding on a gurney and performed a cost-benefit analysis.

That was who had held her hand at all those fertility appointments.

That was who had wept at her bedside.

She had married an accountant of other people’s lives, a man who could carry a spreadsheet where his conscience should have been, and she had never seen it, because he had been so very careful, and so very kind.

Sabeen offered one last thing through the phone: an automated wire of eight million dollars was set to execute at 8:30 that morning.

Once it cleared, the money would leave the country and Silas would be permanently implicated as the thief.