It had been built out of exactly the same material as their case against me.

Edited truths.

Selective memories.

Invented explanations.

Watching Rachel’s face come apart, revelation by revelation, I felt something toward her that surprised me, which was pity.

She had wronged me; she had gripped my wrist hard enough to bruise it and photographed me bleeding on a floor and helped assemble a fraud designed to strip me of my life.

I owed her no sympathy.

And yet, watching her learn in open court that the man she had built her life around had lied to her about the bonus, the mortgage, the bailouts, the diagnosis, all of it, I recognized her, because she was another of Michael’s victims, a slower and more complicit one, but a victim nonetheless.