Part of me wanted, even then, to believe the version he would surely offer: a misunderstanding, a scene taken out of context, a distraught employee and an innocent man.

But the older, colder part of me — the part that had sat across from a hundred men in tailored suits explaining why the woman they had harmed was lying — that part was not confused at all.

It had heard everything.

And it kept the phone steady while the rest of me came apart, because it understood that grief could wait and a recording could not.

Dalton was still talking, his voice smooth and low, the voice of a man who had said cruel things in reasonable tones so often he no longer heard the difference.

“Take the money,” he told her.