He moves money, he moves Rowena, he reaches out to the half of the city council that sat on his mother’s charity boards, he turns a quiet accusation into a he-said-she-said that drags through the courts until the person with less money runs out of it first, and the person with less money was me.

The public room was not cruelty.

It was the one arena in which his advantages did not operate, where the evidence could be shown to witnesses faster than it could be suppressed, and where the detectives could act before he could reach a single lever.

I did not choose the church to humiliate him.

I chose it because it was the only place his power could not follow him, and because Rowena, after ten years of being hidden, had earned the right to be unhidden somewhere everyone could see.

Chapter 25 — Let Them Speak Now