“You will have a guaranteed monthly income from my remaining shares.”

“We don’t have to go through a public divorce that drags our names through the papers.”

“Think about the girls, Arden.”

“Think about how this will look to their friends.”

He was using the girls now, the same daughters he had barely spoken to in six months.

He had missed our youngest daughter’s birthday dinner because he was in Miami with Bianca.

“The girls already know who you are, Graham,” I said.

“They watched you pack a suitcase every other weekend.”

“They aren’t stupid.”

“This is about you saving your own skin.”

“I am trying to save all of us,” he said, his voice rising slightly.

“If the federal prosecutors get involved, the government will freeze everything.”

“They will put a lien on the house.”

“They will seize the bank accounts.”

“We will both be left with nothing.”

“Is that what you want?”

“To see us ruined just to get back at me?”

He was trying to make it sound like a mutual tragedy, a shared sacrifice.

I opened my leather handbag and looked inside.