Theft.

It’s all documented.”

I watched Julian’s knees actually buckle under him, watched him catch himself against the doorframe.

The arrogant man in the silk robe who had looked me up and down on that porch six hours earlier, who had called my mother a servant and shut my own door in my face, was gone, and in his place stood a pale, shaking, hollowed-out version of himself, a man who had just heard the word district attorney and understood, finally and completely, that this was not a thing he could talk his way out of.

There was no charm left to deploy, no reasonable frame to place around it.