He had typed that to me, to the woman whose inheritance had founded his company, whose systems ran it, whose name was on the deeds he had never read.

And the astonishing thing, the thing I sat with for a while, was that he believed it.

He was not bluffing.

In Flynn’s mind it was simply true that I had nothing without him, because in Flynn’s mind he was the substance and I was the shadow, and he had told himself that story so many times, for so many years, with my full cooperation, that he had lost the ability to tell it from the truth.

I had helped him lose that ability.

That was the last thing I had left to feel guilty about, and I let it go, in that room, and after that there was nothing left in me but the work.