The footage had shown her that Dorian did not love her.
That was terrible, but it was, in the end, a matter of the heart, and hearts change; she could almost have forgiven the simple fact of him wanting someone else.
The money was different.
The money was premeditation.
It was not a moment of weakness in a drawn-drape afternoon; it was a hundred and thirty thousand dollars moved in careful increments over many months, each transfer a small deliberate decision, a man sitting at his desk again and again and choosing to take from the woman who trusted him in order to give to the woman he wanted.
You cannot do that in a moment of passion.
You can only do it slowly, coldly, with intent — the same way he had withdrawn his warmth from her, the same patient cruelty pointed at her bank account instead of her heart.
And the cruelest arithmetic of all was the one that involved Rhys.
Because while Dorian spent Odette’s savings on Lyra, Rhys was out on a bridge in the freezing dark, working himself hollow to fund a marriage that his own brother was quietly emptying from the inside.
Two people robbed by the same two thieves, each of them kept in the dark, each of them working and saving and trusting while the money they earned went to build someone else’s escape.