My husband had not just fallen out of love with me, if he had ever been in it.

He had been, for years, methodically preparing to sacrifice me.

And that discovery, terrible as it was, gave me something I had not had before, which was total clarity, and total freedom from any lingering obligation.

You do not owe loyalty to people who have designated you their scapegoat.

You do not owe patience to a family building a prison around your name.

Whatever confused sense of duty had kept me quiet and compliant for seven years evaporated the instant I understood my actual role in their plans, and in its place came something clean and cold and useful: the resolve to make certain that the only people who went to prison for the Vance family’s crimes were the Vances.