He Married a Forensic Accountant and Decided Fraud Was a Good Hobby. He Forgot Who My Father Was

He handed it back, and he said, very evenly, “Do you want me to destroy him, Phoebe?

Because I can have it done by lunch.”

“No,” I said.

“I don’t want you to destroy him.

I want to watch him destroy himself.”

I meant something specific by that, and my father, who has spent a lifetime watching men undo themselves, understood it at once.

If he had reached out and crushed Rowan — one call, a favor, a career ended over dinner — Rowan would have survived it intact in the only place that mattered, which was his own mind.

He would have spent the rest of his life telling a story in which he was a talented man destroyed by a jealous father-in-law’s raw power, and he would have believed it, and worse, some people would have believed it with him.