The financial case was clean and boring and devastating, which is what prosecutors like.

Four hundred and six thousand dollars had left the household operating account in nine payments to a shell company, every single one of them structured to fall under the threshold that would have routed it to Chadworth’s desk for signature.

Theresa’s forensic team traced the money out of Meridian Interiors and Design in three hops and found roughly two hundred and eighty thousand of it still sitting where it had landed.

The rest had gone into a car, a watch, and a deposit on an apartment in Scottsdale that Sabina had leased in November — six weeks after the engagement was announced — which the prosecution used to devastating effect, because it demonstrated that she had been building an exit before she had ever moved in.