I had spent a career learning to catch the practiced deceptions of corporate thieves, and I could not catch the practiced deception of the woman who raised me, because catching her would have required me to first entertain the possibility that she was a thief, and that possibility was, until I opened my own front door onto a freezing room, literally unthinkable to me.

That is the true genius of the betrayal from within.

It does not defeat your defenses.

It gets in underneath them, through the one door you were never taught to lock, because you were taught that the people on the other side of it were the ones the locks were for.

Chapter 4 — He Canceled the Money

Wendy’s hand found my wrist, and her grip was weak, and desperate, and she pulled me close enough to whisper.