But this was not passion.

This was administration.

Four hundred thousand dollars does not move in a single desperate night; it moves in dozens of small deliberate decisions spread across two years, each one made in cold blood, at a desk, in daylight, by a man who then came home and ate dinner across from the wife he was robbing.

Every one of those transfers was a small door quietly closing on a future in which Leo and I were safe, and Julian had closed them one by one, unhurried, certain he had all the time in the world, because he was certain no one was watching.

It was the certainty that undid me.