I fell for him because he found the exact wound eighteen years in the system had left in me and pressed his whole weight against it, gently, for eighteen months, until I would have signed anything he put in front of me.

That is not a failure of intelligence.

It is what predation looks like when it is done well.

I have stopped being ashamed of believing him.

The shame belongs to the man who studied a lonely woman’s heart in order to rob it.

Chapter 6 — The Charred Page