Marcus had not come to fight; his attorney simply handed Richard a formal legal notice, and the shape of the whole grotesque puzzle clicked into place for everyone in that lobby.

Claudia had been with Marcus.

She had filed for support when his club was thriving, then vanished when his business hit a state audit and the money looked shaky, and months later she had resurfaced on Alejandro’s arm, calling him the father — because Alejandro projected the illusion of wealth, and Claudia had never, at any point, been in love with a man.

She had been in love with an illusion.

Alejandro had bragged at high school reunions for years that he was a self-made tycoon with a luxury condo, and Claudia, watching our life from the outside, its vacations and its watches and its fine dinners, had assumed I was a frail, sick heiress sitting on a fortune my husband controlled, and had decided to take my place, gambling her life on a lie a man told to make himself feel large.

They both had.