Selina’s fabricated scratch, her false report, her performance of victimhood, all of it was designed so that my death would be recorded as something other than the truth, a justified defense, a tragic accident, anything but the truth.

They intended not merely to end my life but to rewrite it, to make me, in the official telling, the aggressor, the attacker, the one who deserved what she got, while they walked free and grieving.

And it was that, more than the dying itself, that some deep part of me could not accept.

I might not be able to stop them from killing me.

But I could refuse to let them lie about it.