I slid the envelope, unread, into the paper shredder beside my desk, and watched the blades turn it into neat white ribbons in seconds.

“Tell his attorney,” I said calmly, “that the court order stands.

It is not negotiable.” Renata grinned.

“Consider it done.”

Chapter 19 — The Weightless Kind of Free

I have thought a great deal, since that morning with the envelope, about the two different kinds of freedom, because I spent a year chasing the wrong one and found the right one almost by accident.

The freedom I thought I wanted, all through that year in the dark, was the freedom of victory — of beating Roman, of watching him fall, of standing over the ruins of the life that had diminished me and feeling, at last, that I had won.