People who habitually manipulate others, she said, come to believe they will never be caught, because they so rarely are; the world has taught them they can act with impunity, and so they grow careless in exactly the way careful people never do.

Vanessa and her brother had written down their scheme for the same reason Vanessa had felt safe threatening a housekeeper in a house she believed unwatched: because nothing in their experience had ever suggested there would be consequences.

It was, in the end, their own confidence that undid them, the settled certainty that people like them do not get caught.

Chapter 15 — In Her Own Words