After That Night (Will Trent, #11)

by Karin Slaughter

And at the end of the day, it’s easier to just shut up about it and try to live your life and hope—pray like hell—that it doesn’t come up, so you don’t have to deal with it again and again and again.”

She told me that what happened to me and what happened to Dani, that they were both connected.

M&M—that’s the Morbidity and Mortality conference. Every time a resident has an adverse event like a death, they have to present the case to a roomful of doctors. They question you and pick apart your decisions and try to figure out if you could’ve done something better.”

This was why you checked socials on dudes before you went out with them. Why you texted your friends before and after a date. Why you kept your location services on and your mace in your purse and slept on a friend’s sweaty, fapped-out couch because it was fucking terrifying to have a vagina in this world.

it was an okay game if you were the type of man who could waste five hours riding around in a toy car whacking a small white ball with a stick.

“They make you feel special. They sweep you off your feet. They buy you things. They make sure you’ve got food and clothes and a roof over your head and before you know it, you’ve got nothing and they control everything. That’s when they tell you to get on your knees. And you do it, because they have all the power.”

“They control their wives, abuse them, humiliate them, cheat on them, treat them like shit. And the wives put up with it. They tell themselves that they love their husbands, or that a divorce would hurt the kids, but the truth is that they’re terrified. They don’t want to be poor. They sure as hell don’t know how to be alone. At least I knew I was bought and paid for.

Domestic violence was one of the most complicated crimes—part assault, part coercive control, part brainwashing, part false imprisonment. Whether the victim was living in a mansion or a tract home, there were all different kinds of reasons for staying. Isolation, shame, embarrassment, denial, fear of losing their children, of becoming homeless, and the very real fear of violence because the most dangerous time for a victim was when they tried to leave their abuser. Telling somebody to walk out the door was easy when you’d never had a door slammed into your head so many times that you’d ended up with a skull fracture.