I don’t accept returns. What neither of them knew, as the elevator carried me down, was that I was not leaving defeated.

I was leaving with a copy of our financial records, with the access code to the building’s hallway cameras, and with one question already forming that would, by morning, make their affair look like the smallest part of what they’d done.

Chapter 8 — Check Your Accounts

I spent the night at Farah’s — an old friend from college who had known Valentina almost as long as I had, and who took one look at my face in her doorway and simply opened the door wider.

When I had told her all of it, every detail of the worst night of my life, she did not reach for tissues or platitudes.

She reached for my laptop.