I did not want to win the house.

I wanted to be free of everything the house had come to mean, and the cleanest way to be free of a thing that has been corrupted is not to win it back but to let it go entirely, and build somewhere new, where none of the poison can follow.

So I did not fight for the estate.

I released it, and took its value, and its value became a small safe house and my daughter’s whole free future — which is a far better use for it than a monument to a marriage that was always a lie.

I did not burn down my empire in a fit of rage.