So when I met Gavin, an ambitious man clawing his way up, I gave him that clean version.

I hid the fund, hid the tower, hid the career that could have opened any door for him, and I told myself it was integrity.

And for a while it even felt like it.

But I see now what I could not see then: that in trying to be loved without my power, I had also handed a man the belief that I had none — and to a certain kind of man, a woman with no power is not a purer object of love.

She is a safer target.