The next hours were chaos for the Dixons. Reports said Tristan’s father had paid enormous bribes to secure contracts. Mara turned up as a partner in a company that bought cheap materials and invoiced them as luxury goods.

Tristan had personally authorized transfers and signed false reports, month after month. There were leaked messages, too, where he mocked the workers and ordered their pay delayed.

Those low people always end up taking whatever we give them, he’d written in one.

The same wealthy friends who’d come to my wedding to show off their ties to the Dixons now denied ever knowing them. Business partners stopped answering their calls.

Two banks demanded overdue loans repaid, and clients canceled their projects.

At noon a plain van pulled up in front of our house, and Tristan got out alone. The designer suit was gone. His shirt was wrinkled, his eyes bloodshot; he walked like a man who’d aged ten years overnight.