I felt the tightness in my chest, the knot of wet rope I had carried into that room, begin, at last, to loosen.

Because I had not come to that courtroom seeking revenge.

I want to be clear about that, since it is the thing I most misunderstood about myself until that very morning.

For a year, as I gathered the evidence, I had told myself a story in which this was vengeance — in which I would make Roman pay, humiliate him as he had humiliated me, watch him suffer.

But sitting there, feeling the knot loosen, I understood that vengeance had never actually been what I wanted, and that if it had been, this moment would have felt hot and sharp and satisfying, and instead it felt cool, and quiet, and clean.