They had turned on each other in front of two hundred people, and there was no calling it back.

Chapter 14 — Suspended

I want to be honest about something, because it matters to me that this part be true: I had not planned to destroy them quite so publicly, in front of two hundred of the people whose good opinion they had spent their whole lives chasing.

I would have been content to do it in a conference room, on paper, with no audience.

But they had insisted on the party.

They had built the stage themselves, and lit it, and filled it with witnesses, and then handed me the microphone.