Before Luis, Lili had shared her story with very few people. But something about him made her feel comfortable. Luis was charming, funny, and incredibly handsome. He had a wide smile, dark hair, and bright green eyes. He was married, though, so Lili hid the feelings she was starting to have for him. Toward the end of the summer, Luis came clean: He was falling for her too. He was separated from his wife, he said. He begged Lili to be with him. She demurred. She admitted her own attraction, but an affair went against her ethics. His marriage was already through, he said. She remained resolute.

Now it was awkward. They were still up late together in the wiretap room. Alone, side by side, listening to the mobsters chat—or worse, have phone sex with their girlfriends—Lili and Luis batted romantic repartee at each other. He loved her, he said. Midlife crisis, she shot back. I’m only 32, he said. I’m not yet 20, she replied. Lili stood her ground.

Come Autumn, Lili returned to school and passed the wiretap to a new analyst. Luis and his wife entered couples therapy. As the leaves turned and Lili settled into her sophomore classes, she moved on.

And then, one morning, her phone buzzed.

“I left her. It’s over. I need to see you.”

Lili and Luis stepped off the plane into the heavy San Salvadorian air. Katya trailed behind, thickly made up, stumbling beneath a blanket of blown-out hair. Lili wondered whether she had made a terrible mistake by inviting her mother to come here and live with them. It was 2012. Just three years after graduating from Columbia, Lili was already a mother herself. She held her baby, Lia, in her arms.

After Luis left his wife, Lili dated him through college and fell madly in love. After class, she met him downtown in pubs and dives, where Luis talked about the day’s dangers and shared stories from his time at the NYPD: chasing a dealer down a Bronx alleyway; wrestling a gun from a man’s hand in a high-rise hallway. Then they went back to his place. With each date, Lili’s world of exams and problem sets seemed increasingly frivolous. By the time she graduated, in 2009, the idea of Wall Street was long gone and she was set on becoming a federal agent.