Warren offered to have his communications team defend me publicly.

I asked him not to.

“Oliver isn’t a corporate statement,” I told him.

“Neither am I.”

He understood.

That night Vance sent me an email.

For the first time it contained no threats or demands.

He wrote that he’d spent years chasing his mother’s approval and the possibility of a promotion, believing that a grand enough house and a high enough title would prove he was a successful man.