He obeyed because two members of the hotel security staff had noticed the grab from across the room and had begun, quietly, to move in our direction, and even in his panic Marcus retained enough animal cunning to understand that being removed from a wedding for manhandling his mistress would only make a bad night catastrophically worse.

His voice, when he turned back to me, had gone desperate.

“Evelyn, listen.

Those transactions have explanations.” “Wonderful,” I said.

“You can give them Monday.” “Monday?” “To federal investigators.” Chloe gasped.

Marcus went completely, utterly still.

And then he said the thing that people in his position always say, the accusation that is meant to shift the ground from his crimes to my motives.

“You’re doing this,” he hissed, “because you hate me.” And I shook my head, because this, of everything, was the thing I most needed him to understand, the thing that separated what was happening from what he imagined was happening.