The affair, and everything after it, taught me otherwise.

Because a scream, however justified, would have accomplished nothing on that bistro terrace except to warn Christopher that I knew, to trigger his defenses, to begin a fight on his terms, in the open, where his talent for manipulation and my talent for numbers would have been badly mismatched in his favor.

My silence was not weakness, and it was not even, really, restraint.

It was strategy.