I had thought that night was the ending.

It was barely the middle.

I remember stepping out of that ballroom into the cool air afterward, my hands not quite steady, and feeling the particular vertigo of having won and understanding, in the same breath, that I had not won anything yet.

I had exposed Sabrina.

I had said my piece in front of the whole city.

By every ordinary measure it should have been over — the guilty arrested, the truth spoken aloud, the credits rolling.

And instead Sabrina’s last words were following me out into the night: I didn’t plan this alone. Four words, and they turned my triumph inside out.