What they hold is a belief — carefully installed in the people they exploit — that resistance is pointless, that the outcome is decided in advance, that the smart move for someone small is to stay quiet and take the settlement and disappear.

The belief is the whole apparatus.

The threats, the isolation, the leash of her documents — all of it existed to maintain one idea in her mind: that she would fold, because people like her always fold.

And the moment she stopped believing it, the entire structure he had built around her simply lost its foundation.

He had never had power over her.

He had only had her fear that he did.