I wanted him stopped now. But I had built a career on understanding that a case assembled in a panic is a case a good lawyer takes apart, and that the difference between a suspect who walks and a suspect who is convicted is almost always the patience of the people who built the file.

If I moved too early, Emiliano would lawyer up, the affair would become a he-said-she-said, the sabotage would become an unprovable accusation from a brain-injured woman, and the money would vanish into structures no prosecutor could untangle in time.

So I made myself wait.

I let him sign the fraudulent power of attorney, because the signing was evidence.

I let him open the loans, because the loans were evidence.

I let my sister buy her jewelry and my mother book her trip, because every charge was another thread in a rope I was quietly braiding around all three of them.