Please.”

It was exactly the wrong thing to say, and I knew it, which was why I said it.

Because the surest way to make Julian Vance destroy something was to convince him it was precious to me.

Seeing my apparent terror, hearing me beg for the laptop, he let out a dark, arrogant laugh, the laugh of a man who believes he has found his enemy’s one vulnerable point.

He shoved past me, and he raised the crowbar, and he brought it down on the laptop, again and again, with a fury that had been building, I think, for the entire seven years I had failed to adequately worship his family, until the machine was nothing but shattered glass and split plastic and broken circuitry.