Footage would leak that afternoon of the decorated Commander dragged out of his foyer in handcuffs, his silk robe hanging off his shoulders, shouting empty threats at agents who wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Patricia fared no better. She was detained on the tarmac of a private airfield, wrapped in a vicuña coat, her pearls clenched in one fist, as Homeland Security agents blocked the stairs to her chartered jet — fueled, it turned out, for a one-way trip to a non-extradition country.

They were broken. Stripped of their rank, their stolen wealth, and their carefully curated myth.

I watched it all before eight in the morning and I believed, standing there with cold coffee in my hand, that I had watched the end of something.

An arrest is not an end. An arrest is a docket number. I would learn the difference slowly, over fourteen months, at a table in the Prettyman Courthouse.

Chapter 9 — A Full Breath

I stood on that balcony, the cold morning air biting my face, and waited for the rush of vindictive joy.