And I learned, most of all, the truest lesson of my life: that revenge is not a scream, and it is not a blow, and it is not a thing you do in hot blood and regret.

Revenge — real revenge, the kind that holds up — is a document filed at precisely the right moment.

It is a witness protected before trial.

It is a bank account frozen before sunrise, so that the man wakes into a world that has already ended without his noticing.

Roman had forgotten something, in his triumph, or perhaps he had never really let himself know it.

Before I was his wife, before I ever wore his ring, I had been a forensic accountant for the Attorney General’s office.