She did not realize he was holding a larger one to hers, and had been, the entire time, waiting to see if he would ever need to use it.

The powerful person, I have learned, is undone not by a more powerful person, but by the moment their leverage evaporates, when the fear they relied on turns to resolve and the secret they exploited turns to evidence.

Wendy Vance walked into that hospital room holding, she thought, all the cards.

She walked out having discovered that the frightened boy had become a man, that the man was a father, and that the father held her own crimes in a sealed file and loved his daughter enough to burn the whole world down.

Her power was real.