I could make certain that whatever they told the world, the truth existed, somewhere, in Julian’s own voice, waiting to contradict them.

That was the refusal that moved my hand to my wrist: not the desperate will to survive, but the more implacable will to not be erased and replaced by a lie, to insist that the truth of what happened to me would outlive my body if my body could not outlive the afternoon.

It turned out that my body did survive, that the refusal saved not only the truth but me.

But even if it had not, even if I had died on that rug, the refusal would have been worth it, because it would have meant that Julian and Selina, whatever else they got away with, would not have gotten away with the lie.