And it meant that saving her money was going to feel to her, for a while, exactly like betrayal.

Chapter 22 — The Warning

It was Zoe who found the thing that turned doubt into something colder.

She had laid a new screenshot beside a warning on her tablet — two men in the same dark jacket, the same small crease beside the left eye — and she said, “Mom, look at the name under this one.” The public notice listed a businessman connected to an international fraud investigation.

The photograph was grainy, but the face was familiar enough that I pulled Chad’s printed business card out from under the bank papers.