I need to say something about Andres, because in a story full of people who betrayed me he was the one who didn’t, and it would be easy to lose him in the noise of the others.

He had married into the same family I had, and he had been lied to as thoroughly as I had — his wife in my bed, his brother-in-law a man who had paid to have me killed, and Andres out there balancing spreadsheets and believing he was part of an ordinary family.

When I showed him the truth, I watched him absorb, in the space of a few minutes, that his marriage was over and that people he’d shared holidays with were capable of murder.

A weaker man would have collapsed, or raged, or run to confront Ximena and blown the whole thing open before we were ready.

Andres did none of that.

He went very still, and then he asked me one question — what did I need — and when I told him I needed the money traced by someone the prosecutors would believe, he simply nodded and became, overnight, the most valuable ally I had.