I assembled it all into a single, meticulous, bulletproof forensic ledger, hundreds of pages, the kind of document I had spent my career building to hand to federal investigators, except that this time the subjects were my own husband and his mother.

I encrypted it, and I secured it, and I told no one.

I let Julian and Tessa go on believing I was the quiet accountant who had finally, tearfully, given up and left.

And I waited, because a case like that is a weapon that must be deployed correctly, and I did not yet have the one thing that would make it perfect.

As it turned out, Julian was about to bring me that final piece himself.