He had shown me, over and over, exactly how a lie is built — the buried document, the chosen expert, the tidy transfer, the confident tone.

He had handed me a complete education in his own methods, believing all the while that he was handing it to someone too broken to use it.

He looked at me on that terrace, and I saw the moment he understood that his most reliable tool had become the instrument of his ruin.

He had spent six years underestimating a forensic accountant.

It is not an error a person gets to make twice.

Chapter 17 — Restitution