The only move it does not account for — the only exit from the trap — is the one thing it is designed to make impossible, which is to feel the full force of the cruelty and decline, entirely, to show it.

To take the blow and keep your face still.

I could do that.

I had, God help me, nine years of practice at swallowing what that man did to me.

He had spent nine years training me in the exact skill that would defeat him, and he had never once considered that I might, someday, aim it at him instead of at myself.

Chapter 3 — An Interesting Decision