She had traded twelve years of a real friendship for six months of a borrowed one, and ended with neither.

I did not gloat over any of it, though I think I would have been entitled to.

Mostly I felt a kind of grim symmetry, watching the consequences distribute themselves so precisely.

Damian had wanted a life that was exciting and unaccountable, and he ended it accountable for every dollar, in a rented room, his standing among the people whose opinion he cared about most quietly ruined.

Valentina had wanted my life — my husband, my things, my security — and she ended with a criminal record and a restraining order and an empty phone, cast out by the very circle she had performed for all those years.

Neither of them had been undone by my revenge; I had, in the end, done almost nothing but hand documents to a competent woman and let the machinery of the law do what it does.