Not my lawyers. The state.”

He tapped a finger against his temple.

“I’m eighty-two. I don’t have the time or the patience to fight them from beyond the grave. So I built a guillotine. And I sat here very quietly and waited for them to put their own heads under it.”

“And me?” My voice broke. The betrayal tasted like ash. “Where did I fit? Why did you let them leave me here alone?”

He looked at me then, and there was something almost gentle in it, buried under a great deal of steel.

“I needed a witness,” he said. “Someone with clean hands to pull the lever. It could not be me. A man who engineers his own rescue is not a victim in a courtroom — he’s a co-conspirator.”