To spend her father’s fortune and her own new energy grinding a small, cowardly man into the dirt would be to stay tied to him — to let him remain, for months or years, the organizing fact of her life.

She had spent five years shaped around Damson’s opinion of her.

She would not now spend five more shaped around her hatred of him; that was just the same cage with the door painted a different color.

Let him keep his own company.

That, she came to see, was the cleanest justice available, and it required nothing of her at all.

But Damson’s reputation destroyed itself without any help from her.