I did not stop feeling in order to act.

I acted so that my feeling would have somewhere to go besides collapse.

Every camera I placed, every file I saved, every day I held my composure was grief transmuted into protection — for Leo, for myself, for the life I was not going to let a lying man quietly steal.

The alternative was to sit in the wreckage and weep while he emptied the house around me.

I chose to build.