He thought the deeds and the laptop were just what I happened to grab.

They were the whole war, packed into a carry-on, and he handed them to me by standing aside to make his threat. You’ll have nothing to come back to. He had it exactly reversed.

I was leaving with everything that mattered.

He was the one who’d wake up tomorrow to find the accounts frozen and the deeds gone and no idea that the quiet woman he’d watched pack a suitcase had already, in her head, filed the first motion.

In the elevator, my phone buzzed.

Valentina. I’m sorry, but I love Damian. I looked at it a moment, and then I typed back the last thing I would ever say to her: Then keep him.