I did not take Damian’s future.

I want to be as clear about that as I know how to be, because the easy version of this story makes me its avenging hero, and that version is a lie.

Damian destroyed his own future, patiently, over years, through greed and arrogance and the foolish conviction that my silence was the same as my consent.

All I ever did — the only thing I did — was decline to keep paying for it.

I stepped out of his shadow.