That is the thing the powerful never expect from the people they have bullied: not a dramatic confrontation, which they know how to win, but patient, boring, procedural competence, which they do not.

Luca was ready for a screaming wife.

He had no defense at all against a woman who had quietly filed the right paperwork.

I did not defeat him with rage, or with a grand gesture, or with anything he would have recognized as a fight.

I defeated him with a to-do list, executed in the correct sequence, while he was still driving around town looking for someone to yell at.

Chapter 14 — Four Months