And a person who understands that she is being acquired, rather than courted, can fight it clearly, which a person still half-believing the pretty words cannot.

Chapter 11 — The Recording

There was one more thing in my archives that I had been saving, and I opened it for Flynn then, because the moment had come to use it.

Months earlier, going through my father’s old files, I had discovered something Wendy had clearly forgotten: that my father’s private conference line, the one in his study, automatically recorded and archived every call that came through it.

My father had set it up years ago, a careful man’s habit, and after his death no one had thought to turn it off, and Wendy had gone right on using that line to conduct her business, never once remembering that it was listening.