Each step is reasonable.
Each doubt is planted gently.
And the genius of it, the truly cruel genius, is that by the time the walls are up, the victim believes he built them himself, for his own good reasons.
Corbin had not been weak, Adrienne understood.
He had been managed, by someone very skilled, who had studied exactly where he was tender and pressed there, again and again, until a strong man cut off his own mother and thanked the person who talked him into it.
Adrienne stood very still, holding her daughter’s hand, understanding that she was hearing something she was never meant to hear — and understanding, too, that she was not going to be able to walk away from it.
Chapter 6 — The Proof
Marguerite opened the envelope, and Adrienne — trying not to look and failing — saw that the old woman had not come with grievances.
She had come with evidence.
Spread across the walnut desk were printed emails, screenshots of messages, bank wire records, and corporate contracts stamped with a logo Adrienne recognized from the lobby directory.
The numbers on some of the pages had enough zeros to make her lightheaded.
“Camilla didn’t come to my son because she fell in love with him,” Marguerite said, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand.
“She came to him because someone sent her.
She targeted him from the very first night.”