We think he took her.

We think she caught him at something, and we think he panicked, and we think wherever he’s running to, he took Elena with him.”

Chapter 11 — The Trust

It came out over the next hours, in pieces, from the detective and from what the forensic accountants would later confirm, and it was, underneath all the fear, an old and ordinary crime wearing a monstrous face.

Julian had been stealing.

Elena’s family had money — not enormous money, but real money, held in a trust that had come down from her parents, the kind of careful generational thing that is meant to quietly hold a family steady across decades.