I looked down at the man who had split my lip less than a day earlier and listened to him call poverty death. He had never loved me. He had loved what I did for him. He had loved the unearned confidence of standing beside someone competent while claiming the credit.
I stepped back. His hands slid off my legs.
“Get away from me,” I said.
He reached again. I slapped him. The sound cracked through the room like a gunshot. His head snapped sideways. He fell against the chair leg and then to the floor, staring up at me in shock so pure it looked almost childlike.
“That,” I said evenly, “was for the anniversary.”
No one rushed to help him. That, more than anything, told me the spell was over.
I looked at the room, at the board members scrambling to recalculate their liabilities, at Randolph shaking with grief for wealth rather than for what had been done in its name, at my father standing with his arms folded and his eyes on me, proud not because I had destroyed someone but because I had finally stopped allowing myself to be destroyed.