She was, by every account, an innocent party in all of this, a woman who had married a man and built a life and a family with him and had no idea what he truly was, and in the space of ninety seconds, in a ballroom full of cameras, I detonated her entire world along with his.

I did not want to hurt her.

She had done nothing to me or to Chloe.

But I had learned, by then, a hard truth about men like Julian Vance, which is that they surround themselves with innocent people and use that innocence as armor, counting on our reluctance to hurt the bystanders to keep us from ever touching them.

He had hidden behind his wife and his sons and his foundation and his good works for ten years, wearing them like a shield.