And now that it was here, there was no exhilaration in it, only the heaviness of a family being dismantled in a public room, of years of holidays and birthdays and shared meals collapsing into evidence and testimony.

Rachel’s tears were real, in their way, even if they were not for me.

They were the tears of a woman watching her own life detonate.

I took no joy in them.

I had reached the point where my own survival required that I stop protecting the people who were trying to destroy me, and let the consequences they had built finally arrive.

That is not vengeance.