The nib touched the paper.

That calm was the strangest thing I had ever felt.

For five years, standing near Devon while he decided something had meant a low, permanent hum of anxiety in my body — the constant, exhausting labor of watching his face, managing his mood, staying a half-step ahead of a displeasure that could take any shape.

And now, in the single most dangerous moment of my life, in a room where a man was forging my father’s hand while planning my death, that hum was simply gone.

Because for the first time in five years I was not trying to control what he did.

I already knew what he was going to do; I had helped arrange for him to do it in front of witnesses.