Real power is almost never the dramatic blow.

Real power is the restraint that keeps you from throwing it — the discipline to feel the full force of a provocation and decline the trap inside it, because you can see, where your anger cannot, that the person provoking you is fishing for exactly the reaction that would destroy you.

Marguerite did not slap me to hurt me.

On some level she slapped me hoping I would slap her back, because a woman like that survives on grievance, and a returned blow would have handed her the grievance of a lifetime.

I refused to give it to her.

And in refusing, I kept my hands clean and my footage clear and my every legal advantage intact, and I took, lawfully and completely, everything she had spent three years stealing.