“You’re taking this a lot better than I expected,” Torsten said that afternoon, pouring two fingers of my whiskey into his glass without asking.

“I learned patience in places where panic gets people killed,” I said.

He laughed, and clapped me on the shoulder, and missed the warning completely — the way he had missed every important thing for six months.

He thought the war was over because he had won the paperwork.

He did not understand that I had not yet fired a single shot, and that a man who has spent his career watching money move in the dark does not need to raise his voice to end you.

He only needs you to keep talking, in a house that is listening, three days before your own celebration.