She had not needed him ruined.

She had needed to be believed, and free, and returned to her own life — and those, she understood, watching the doors close behind him, she had already had for months, since a cold man knelt on a bedroom floor and asked her who had hurt her and then, unlike everyone else in her life, waited for the answer.

Chapter 16 — The Storm Clears

The legal weather took months to fully clear, but it cleared.

Alaric Ravenscroft was convicted on every count.

The psychiatrists who had sold their signatures lost their licenses and faced penalties of their own; the administrators who had helped him were pulled into the same net.