Catalina met his eyes.

She did not raise her voice.

“Without you,” she said, “I can finally breathe.”

I have negotiated a great many settlements, and I know the difference between a client who wins one and a client who is freed by one, and I watched the second thing happen across that table.

Dalton had come to buy her silence — that was the entire purpose of his offer, the money was just the wrapping.

A nondisclosure agreement is how men like him convert a crime into a private transaction: you are paid, and in exchange the truth becomes his property, sealed, deniable, available to be used against the next woman who has no way of knowing you exist.