Not because I had finally beaten them, but because I had at last stopped playing the game they had built me for.

I adjusted my valedictorian sash, and I held my diploma firmly in both hands, and I walked across that stage, in front of everyone, into the first day of a life that was going to be entirely, and beautifully, and unconditionally my own.

Chapter 16 — The Sentences

Six months after graduation, the morning sun came through the tall windows of my new apartment in Seattle, and I sat at my table with a cup of black coffee, a stack of onboarding documents from the technology firm where I now worked as a junior security analyst, and a single heavy manila folder from the state prosecutor’s office.

I opened the folder’s clasp, and I read the end of the story.

The criminal proceedings against Stephanie and Luca had concluded three weeks earlier.