He went home, and he pulled his archived phone records from six years earlier, and he searched, and he found it: a flagged text message from his mother, sent during the exact week of the divorce.

It read: If anyone calls the office claiming to be from Elena, let me know before you respond. He read it several times.

It was not the language of a mother comforting a heartbroken son.

It was the language of a person managing a threat.

Chapter 8 — Lucia

The next morning, Alex tracked down Lucia, the executive assistant who had worked at his old firm during those years.

She was frightened when she understood why he was calling, frightened of being pulled into whatever legal reckoning was coming, and her fear, in the end, was what made her tell the truth.