Christopher and Beatrice had believed that eleven minutes were all it would take to reduce an independent woman to a frightened victim who would sign away her life.

Instead, those eleven minutes did the one thing they least intended: they shattered, all at once, every excuse I had spent nine years making for the people who did not deserve a single one of them.

They wanted my signature.

They wanted my property.

And above all, they wanted me to believe that saying no to them would destroy me.

They were wrong about that, the way they were wrong about everything.