She was patient.

She never rushed the money.

She asked for nothing, at first, which is the oldest and best technique of the long con, because the mark’s guard is built to detect grasping, and drops entirely before someone who appears to grasp at nothing.

She let me believe I had found, against all odds, at this late and cynical point in my life, a person who loved the man and not the empire.

And I, who prided myself on being unfoolable, on having built everything I owned by reading people better than they read themselves, fell for it completely, staked my life on it, because the one blind spot even the shrewdest man retains is his own longing to be loved.