It is a bridge, not a destination — a way to keep moving forward when pure indifference is not yet available to us, when we are still too angry, too wounded, too entangled to want anything but to make them hurt the way we hurt.

And there is no shame in needing that bridge; it carried me across a year I could not otherwise have crossed.

But a bridge is meant to be walked off of.

The mistake so many people make, and the mistake I nearly made, is to mistake the bridge for the far shore, to build a permanent home in the middle of it, to organize a whole life around the ongoing project of the other person’s suffering, and to call that freedom when it is only a more comfortable captivity.

The story I thought I was living was a revenge story.

The story I was actually living, I only understood at the end, was an escape story — and the difference is everything, because a revenge story keeps you forever tied to the person you are avenging yourself upon, while an escape story ends with you walking, unburdened, into a life that no longer has them in it at all.

I came for revenge.

I left with something so much better that I no longer wanted the revenge.

That is the whole story, really.

Everything else is just how I got there.

Chapter 2 — You’ll Never Touch My Money

Roman settled into his seat across the aisle with the comfort of a man who had never once, in his whole life, seriously entertained the possibility of losing.

He crossed his legs, leaned back, and let a lazy, arrogant grin spread across his face.

“You are not seeing a single cent of my money again, Lena,” he called out, just loud enough for the first few rows of spectators to hear him.