It went against everything my fear wanted.

But fear is a bad strategist, and I had stopped listening to mine in a hospital bed.

What I listened to instead was the cold, patient part of me that knew exactly how to prove a thing so completely that no one could ever un-prove it — and that part of me understood that the longer they were allowed to believe they had won, the more thoroughly they would document their own guilt.

So I gave them rope.

And they took it, all of it, hand over hand, all the way to the gala.

Chapter 12 — The Signature