But my wife Bess taught me across fifty years what love actually is.

What you have is only greed wearing its face.” I looked up at the detective.

“Take her out of my house.” She screamed as the officers raised her to her feet, her crimson gown dragging across the rug as they led her out through the grand entryway, in front of every guest she had invited to watch me fall.

I felt no triumph as they took her, and I want to be truthful about that, because the story would be neater with a note of vengeance and it would be a lie.

What I felt, watching Dulce dragged screaming through the entryway of the house Bess and I had made, was a vast and weary sadness.

Not for Dulce — she had earned every day of the twenty-two years coming to her, and I have never once regretted a moment of what I did.