Part of me did not want to know.

Part of me wanted to keep my simple villain and my clean anger.

But I had come here for the truth, all of it, and I was not going to flinch from it now just because it might turn out to be more merciful, and more heartbreaking, than the lie I had lived with.

Chapter 17 — The Runoff

“Julian didn’t just vanish into thin air,” I said, and I reached for my laptop and slid the flash drive into it.

“He disappeared because of what he knew, and because of what he could prove.