He had treated her body as an asset on his balance sheet, a thing to be optimized toward his control of a company, and the deepest violence in that was not the scalpel.

It was the arrogance of a man who looked at his wife and saw a holding to be managed rather than a person to be asked.

And so her recovery, when it finally came, was not about whether she would have a child.

It was about the folder in her hands and the fact that she, and no one else, would read it and decide.

The clinic could give her odds.

The surgeons could give her options.