The staff called the mansion a fortress because it had everything a frightened rich man could buy.
Steel gates.
Cameras.
Bullet-resistant glass.
Private elevators.
A medical suite larger than some apartments.
Men stationed at every entrance who pretended they were security consultants instead of remnants of Diamond Kelly’s old organization.
But none of it could make him stand.
And none of it could make him sleep.
At forty-two, Diamond—born Damien Kelly, though almost nobody used that name anymore—spent most nights awake in a motorized wheelchair beside the windows of his library, staring at a city that had once frightened itself with his name.
The shooting had happened eighteen months earlier.
One bullet struck his shoulder.
Another damaged his spinal cord.
The surgeons saved his life.
They could not promise the return of meaningful movement below the injury.
Rehabilitation improved his upper-body strength and independence.
He learned transfers.
Pressure relief.
Wheelchair skills.
Medication routines.
How to manage a body that now required planning where instinct had once been enough.
He hated every lesson.
Not because rehabilitation was useless.
Because the man teaching him how to transfer onto a shower bench had no idea that Diamond had once controlled men who carried guns into rooms simply because he nodded.
Or perhaps the therapist knew and did not care.
That was worse.
Diamond stopped attending outpatient therapy after six months.
Then he began firing people.
First nurse lasted eleven days.
Second lasted five.
Third lasted until he threw a glass across the room after she tried moving his wheelchair without asking.
The fourth quit before lunch.
By the time Elena Marlow arrived, the agency had stopped sending nurses.
She was not one.
That was important.
She was a housekeeper.
Thirty-three.
Widowed.
No medical training beyond basic first aid.
She had been hired to manage the private residential floor, coordinate laundry, meals, cleaning staff, and household supplies.
She was explicitly told:
“You are not Mr. Kelly’s caregiver.”
Elena answered:
“Good.”
The estate manager blinked.
“You understand who he is?”
“I understand who signs payroll.”
“That is Mr. Kelly.”
“Then I understand enough.”
Diamond hated her immediately.
Not dramatically.
He hated that she knocked.
Every time.
His bedroom.
Library.
Medical suite.
Even the sunroom.
Three knocks.
Pause.
“Mr. Kelly?”
He told her the second morning:
“You work here. Stop asking permission to enter every room.”
She stood in the doorway holding clean towels.
“Do you want people entering your bedroom without knocking?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll knock.”
“This isn’t a democracy.”
“It’s a bedroom.”
She put the towels away.
He stared.
“You have an answer for everything.”
“No.”
She closed the cabinet.
“Only things that have obvious answers.”
His security chief, Marcus Vale, almost smiled.
Diamond saw him.
“Leave.”
Marcus left immediately.
Elena continued arranging towels.
Diamond watched her.
“Aren’t you afraid of me?”
She looked over her shoulder.
“Should I be?”
That question irritated him because he did not know how to answer it anymore.
Once, yes.
People had been afraid of Diamond Kelly.
Restaurant owners.
Bookmakers.
Construction contractors.
Politicians who accepted favors and later pretended they had never shaken his hand.
But the shooting fractured more than his spine.
Investigations followed.
Former associates disappeared.
Several legitimate businesses distanced themselves.
His attorneys spent a year separating what could still operate lawfully from what could not survive scrutiny.
Diamond had not been convicted of ordering the shooting, extortion, or any grand cinematic list of crimes people later whispered about.
But he had lived close enough to violence for long enough that innocence would have been a ridiculous word.
He knew that.
Elena knew enough not to ask.
For three months, they barely spoke beyond household matters.
Then winter came.
And Diamond’s pain worsened.
Neuropathic pain.
Spasms.
Sleeplessness.
Pressure discomfort.
The rehabilitation physician had warned him that chronic spinal cord injury could involve complicated symptoms that did not behave like ordinary injury pain.
Diamond heard:
You will never control this completely.
So he stopped listening.
One night, Elena found him on the floor.
Not because he had dramatically fallen down a staircase.
His wheelchair had been beside the bed.
He attempted a transfer alone at three in the morning.
His hand slipped.
He landed between the chair and mattress.
He had been there almost twenty minutes when Elena came upstairs because she heard something strike the wall.
She entered only after he answered.
Then froze.
Diamond’s face went dark.
“Get out.”
“No.”
His voice sharpened.
“Elena.”
“I’m calling Marcus.”
“No.”
“You’re on the floor.”
“I noticed.”
“I’m not lifting you.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Good, because I can’t safely do it.”
She called Marcus and the overnight nurse who covered the estate only for scheduled medical needs.
Diamond cursed continuously while they used the appropriate transfer equipment to get him back into bed.
Elena stayed near the door.
After everyone left, Diamond said:
“Enjoyed that?”
She looked genuinely confused.
“What?”
“Watching.”
Her face hardened.
“You think seeing somebody fall is entertainment?”
“You people love pity.”
“No.”
She walked toward the door.
“I love sleep. Which you interrupted.”
He nearly smiled.
Nearly.
Then he said:
“Why were you awake?”
She hesitated.
“Laundry.”
“At three?”
“The upstairs washing machine flooded.”
He looked toward the hallway.
“You were cleaning a flood?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t maintenance do it?”
“Because maintenance leaves at eleven.”
“So wake someone.”
“I did.”
“Who?”
“Me.”
He stared.
“That is not how staffing works.”
She smiled slightly.
“Then perhaps tell your estate manager tomorrow.”
She left.
He did.
Not to punish her.
To increase overnight coverage so no housekeeper was dragging wet towels through hallways at three in the morning alone.
That was the first useful decision Diamond made because of Elena.
The second happened a week later.
He heard her arguing with his chef.
“No.”
The chef said:
“Mr. Kelly requested dinner upstairs.”
“He requested dinner at seven.”
“It’s seven-ten.”
“He is with his physical therapist.”
Diamond stopped outside the kitchen.
Physical therapist.
He had resumed sessions reluctantly after the fall.
The chef continued:
“He gets angry when meals are late.”
Elena answered:
“Then he can be angry at a warm plate in fifteen minutes.”
Diamond rolled into the doorway.
The chef immediately went silent.
Elena looked at him.
“You’re early.”
“My therapist quit.”
“What?”
“He didn’t quit.”
Diamond almost smiled.
“I fired him.”
“Why?”
“He told me to practice transfers.”
“That sounds suspiciously like physical therapy.”
The chef stared at the floor.
Diamond said:
“He told me I use staff to avoid doing anything difficult.”
Elena folded a napkin.
“Was he right?”
The room became completely still.
The chef nearly stopped breathing.
Diamond looked at Elena for several seconds.
Then:
“Everybody leave.”
The chef vanished.
Two assistants vanished.
Elena did not.
He pointed toward the door.
“That includes you.”
“You asked for dinner.”
“I can starve.”
“That would create paperwork.”
He almost laughed.
Instead he said:
“You don’t know what this feels like.”
“No.”
“Then stop acting like you do.”
Elena’s expression changed.
Not offended.
Serious.
“I don’t know what paralysis feels like.”
“Good.”
“I know what watching someone turn pain into permission feels like.”
His eyes narrowed.
“What does that mean?”
“My husband.”
Silence.
She had never mentioned him.
Diamond knew only that employment records listed her as widowed.
“What about him?”
“Elena.”
The estate manager appeared in the doorway.
“Mr. Kelly, your attorney is waiting.”
Diamond looked at her.
“Later.”
She shook her head.
“No.”
“What?”
“You don’t get my life story because you became curious.”
Then she carried the dinner tray upstairs.
Diamond sat alone in the kitchen for five minutes afterward.
Nobody spoke to him that way.
Not anymore.
Not before either, if he was honest.
That night he called the physical therapist.
“Come back.”
The therapist said:
“Under conditions.”
Diamond almost fired him again.
Instead:
“What conditions?”
“You follow the treatment plan we agree on, you do not threaten staff, and you don’t terminate a session because you’re frustrated.”
Diamond stared at the phone.
“Anything else?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“You address me as Dr. Patel or Arun. Not ‘you.’”
Diamond hung up.
Then called back ten minutes later.
“Monday, Dr. Patel.”
Elena knew nothing about that conversation until weeks later.
By spring, Diamond could perform several transfers with less assistance.
Not perfectly.
Not every day.
But more.
He began attending medical appointments outside the mansion again.
His pain remained.
His legs remained paralyzed.
Nothing miraculous happened.
The important change was smaller.
He stopped treating rehabilitation like surrender.
Then came the night Elena slept beside him.
Not in his bed.
That part of the story was exaggerated almost immediately.
The truth was stranger and less romantic.
Diamond developed a fever.
A urinary tract infection was suspected—one of the complications his physicians had taught staff to take seriously given his spinal cord injury and bladder-management needs.
The overnight nurse called the physician.
He was transferred to the hospital.
Treated.
Returned home two days later with instructions, medication, hydration goals, and close monitoring.
He hated being weak.
Hated fever.
Hated the hospital.
Hated needing someone nearby because his blood pressure had been unstable.
A private nurse was scheduled overnight.
At 1:20 a.m., the nurse was called downstairs because another member of staff had cut his hand badly on broken glass.
Elena was finishing inventory in the adjoining sitting room.
Diamond woke from a nightmare.
The shooting.
Again.
Gunfire.
His body falling while his mind still expected his legs to respond.
He shouted.
Elena came to the doorway.
“Mr. Kelly?”
“Leave.”
She stopped.
He was breathing too fast.
Sweat on his forehead.
Hands shaking.
“Where’s Nurse Bennett?”
“Downstairs.”
“Get her.”
“She’ll come back.”
“Now.”
Elena looked at him.
“You’re frightened.”
His expression became dangerous.
“Get out.”
She did.
Five minutes later, she returned.
Not with the nurse.
With a chair.
“What are you doing?”
“Sitting.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I told you to leave.”
“And I did.”
She placed the chair beside the bed.
“Then I decided you shouldn’t be alone until the nurse gets back.”
“I don’t need a maid watching me sleep.”
“Housekeeper.”
He glared.
“Important distinction?”
“To payroll.”
She sat.
Diamond turned his face away.
The nurse returned twelve minutes later.
Checked him.
Everything medically stable.
The nightmare had passed.
She told Elena she could leave.
Elena did.
Or tried.
But by then she had been awake almost nineteen hours.
Two employees had called out sick.
A supply delivery went wrong.
The kitchen refrigerator failed.
The medical floor needed restocking after Diamond returned from hospital.
She sat in the small armchair outside his bedroom to finish a checklist.
And fell asleep.
At some point, the paper slid from her hand.
Her head tilted against the wall.
Her shoes remained on.
Diamond woke just before dawn.
The door was open.
He saw her through it.
Sleeping crookedly in the chair.
Not beautiful.
Not seductive.
Exhausted.
There were dark circles beneath her eyes.
One strand of hair stuck to her cheek.
Her hands rested loosely in her lap.
He stared at her.
Then did something nobody in the house had heard in years.
He laughed.
Quietly.
Not because she looked ridiculous.
Because the woman who had spent months refusing every unnecessary demand of his had finally been defeated by a chair.
Elena woke immediately.
“What?”
Diamond smiled.
She blinked.
Then:
“Why are you looking like that?”
“Like what?”
“Disturbing.”
“You were snoring.”
“I do not snore.”
“You do.”
“No.”
“Like construction equipment.”
She stood.
“You hallucinated from fever.”
He laughed again.
Elena stared.
That was when Marcus entered.
He stopped in the doorway.
Diamond looked at him.
“What?”
Marcus’s eyes moved from Diamond’s smile to Elena.
Then back.
“Nothing.”
“Say it.”
“I’ve worked for you fourteen years.”
“And?”
“I forgot you had teeth.”
Elena laughed.
Diamond stopped smiling instantly.
“Everybody out.”
But it was too late.
The house knew.
Diamond Kelly had smiled.
By lunch, the chef knew.
By dinner, the groundsman knew.
The next day, one of the guards made the mistake of saying:
“Ms. Marlow performed a miracle.”
Diamond fired him.
Then rehired him forty minutes later after Elena said:
“You cannot terminate someone for making a stupid joke if stupidity is not prohibited by contract.”
“It should be.”
“Then half the mansion becomes empty.”
He looked at her.
“Possibly an improvement.”
Their relationship changed after that.
Not romance.
Not yet.
Something more dangerous for Diamond.
Friendship.
Elena told him about her husband eventually.
Thomas Marlow.
Construction foreman.
Charming.
Funny.
Then injured in a workplace fall.
Not paralyzed.
Chronic back damage.
Long-term pain.
He began drinking.
Then pills.
Then anger.
“He never hit me,” Elena said.
Diamond listened.
“He broke walls.”
“Threatened to disappear.”
“Used pain as an answer to every question.”
“Eventually I learned that suffering can explain behavior without making everyone else responsible for enduring it.”
Diamond became very quiet.
“What happened?”
“He died.”
“Overdose?”
“No.”
“Car accident.”
Elena looked at him.
“He was sober when it happened.”
That surprised him.
“Life is irritatingly unwilling to make stories neat.”
Diamond understood that better than she knew.
He asked:
“Did you love him?”
“Yes.”
“Even at the end?”
“Sometimes.”
That answer stayed with him.
Then she said:
“That is why I don’t mistake loving someone for accepting everything they do.”
He heard the message.
She did not need to underline it.
Diamond began changing the mansion.
First, work hours.
He discovered Elena routinely worked sixty hours because three vacant positions had never been filled after he drove staff away.
“You’re done at six.”
She stared.
“What?”
“Unless there is a genuine emergency.”
“Who handles evening household coordination?”
“Somebody paid for evening household coordination.”
“There is nobody.”
“There will be.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“You’re not giving me fewer hours and the same workload.”
He almost smiled.
“No.”
“Because that is what rich men call improvement.”
He laughed.
“I hired two people.”
“Full benefits?”
He stared.
“You are exhausting.”
“Full benefits?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Then he reviewed wages across the household.
Some were fair.
Some were not.
The discrepancies had developed because turnover let managers improvise salaries.
He standardized ranges.
Overtime.
Leave.
Written duties.
Elena asked:
“Why?”
Diamond looked at her.
“Because apparently I own a mansion that was being managed like a nineteenth-century mine.”
She nodded.
“Acceptable answer.”
The larger change was harder.
His businesses.
Diamond still owned legitimate property companies, restaurants, a waste-management firm, and several warehouses.
He also had old relationships nobody described clearly.
One afternoon, his attorney Gabriel Ross brought documents.
“We need to discuss North River.”
Elena was leaving the library.
Diamond said:
“Stay.”
She stopped.
“No.”
“What?”
“You’re discussing business.”
“I trust you.”
“That is not the same as needing me.”
Gabriel looked impressed.
Diamond said:
“I want you here.”
“Why?”
He did not know.
Emotional support?
Witness?
Because she made him feel less like the old version of himself?
All dangerous answers.
Elena saved him.
“I’ll bring coffee.”
Then left.
Diamond stared after her.
Gabriel said:
“She is probably the only employee here who understands boundaries.”
“Continue and you’re fired.”
Gabriel opened the folder.
North River involved warehouses previously leased to companies connected with people Diamond no longer wanted near him.
Some transactions were legitimate.
Others raised questions his lawyers had repeatedly advised him to disentangle from.
For years, Diamond’s solution had been:
Handle it.
Now he asked:
“What does clean separation look like?”
Gabriel stared.
“Legally?”
“Yes.”
“Expensive.”
“Do it.”
“Diamond.”
“What?”
“You understand people may react badly.”
Diamond looked toward the windows.
“I spent twenty years making sure people reacted badly to me.”
He turned back.
“I’ll survive their disappointment.”
It took two years.
Asset reviews.
Sale of interests.
Termination of questionable contracts.
Tax work.
Civil settlements.
Cooperation where required.
No cinematic redemption erased his past.
No single donation turned an underworld figure into a saint.
Diamond simply began removing himself from arrangements that depended on fear or ambiguity.
Some former associates called him weak.
One sent a message:
Chair made you soft.
Diamond stared at it.
Then deleted it.
Not because it did not hurt.
Because answering would pull him back into the only language those men respected.
Elena knew almost none of the details.
Intentionally.
He never wanted her carrying his old world simply because she worked in his new one.
Then one morning she resigned.
Diamond read the letter twice.
“No.”
Elena stood in his library.
“It isn’t a request.”
“Why?”
“Three years.”
“What about them?”
“I came here because I needed stable work after Thomas died.”
“You have stable work.”
“That is why I can leave.”
He stared.
“Someone offered you more?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
She smiled slightly.
“None of your business.”
“I’ll double it.”
“No.”
“Triple.”
“No.”
“Then why?”
She became serious.
“Because if I stay here forever, I need to know whether I chose the job or became part of the machinery.”
Diamond’s jaw tightened.
“What machinery?”
“You.”
That hurt.
She continued:
“You depend on me.”
“I employ you.”
“No.”
“Marcus runs security.”
“Your medical team handles care.”
“Gabriel handles law.”
“But when you are angry, lonely, frightened, or exhausted, everyone still looks for me.”
Diamond said nothing.
“And sometimes you do too.”
He looked away.
“I’m leaving in four weeks.”
“Where?”
“A hotel group.”
“Housekeeping?”
“Operations.”
He almost smiled.
“Promotion.”
“Yes.”
“You deserve it.”
She blinked.
Apparently she expected resistance.
Diamond hated that.
So he said:
“I am still angry.”
“I assumed.”
“But you deserve it.”
That mattered.
He did not sabotage the offer.
Did not call the company.
Did not increase her salary until refusing became financially impossible.
Did not turn affection into leverage.
On Elena’s final day, Diamond gave her an envelope.
She stared.
“If this is a ridiculous bonus—”
“It is a letter.”
“From whom?”
“Me.”
“That sounds worse.”
“Open it later.”
She did.
At home.
It said:
Elena,
You were hired to manage my house.
You somehow managed to teach me that control and care are not synonyms.
I disliked this.
I still do.
You owe me nothing for listening, staying awake, arguing, or falling asleep in an expensive chair.
You especially owe me nothing because I smiled.
That was my face. You did not operate it.
If we ever see each other after today, I want it to be because neither of us is paying the other to remain in the room.
—Damien
Not Diamond.
Damien.
She kept that letter.
They did not see each other for five months.
That was deliberate too.
Then Elena called.
“Are you busy?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He smiled into the phone.
“What do you want?”
“Coffee.”
“With me?”
“No. I’m calling a former employer because I need information about roast temperatures.”
He laughed.
“When?”
“Saturday.”
They met in a public café.
No driver waiting beside the table.
No security men surrounding her.
Marcus remained across the street because Diamond still required assistance and security arrangements.
But Elena arrived independently.
Paid for her own coffee.
Diamond complained.
She ignored him.
That became their first real date only in retrospect.
At the time, neither called it one.
Six months later, he asked:
“Can I take you to dinner?”
She said:
“We have eaten dinner.”
“I mean intentionally.”
She stared.
“You’re asking me on a date.”
“Yes.”
“You’re terrible at this.”
“I had other methods when I was younger.”
“I don’t want to hear them.”
“Neither do the prosecutors.”
She glared.
Then laughed.
“Yes.”
Their relationship developed slowly.
Painfully slowly, according to Marcus.
Elena kept her job.
Her apartment.
Her own money.
She did not move into Diamond’s mansion.
Not for two years.
Even then, she insisted on a cohabitation agreement reviewed by independent counsel.
Diamond laughed when she told him.
“I have lawyers.”
“You have your lawyers.”
“Fair.”
She hired her own.
The agreement clarified her property, savings, income, living arrangements, and what happened if the relationship ended.
No vague promise that she would “always be taken care of.”
She hated that phrase.
“You can take care of me by not making me legally dependent.”
Diamond respected that.
Their romance did not cure him.
His legs did not move again.
He still had infections sometimes.
Pain flares.
Spasms.
Days when transferring independently was harder.
Days when he hated the wheelchair.
Elena never answered:
“You should be grateful you’re alive.”
She also never accepted:
“I’m in pain,”
as permission for cruelty.
Once, three years into their relationship, he shouted at a nurse because a catheter supply shipment was wrong.
Elena waited until the nurse left.
Then:
“Apologize.”
Diamond glared.
“I’m hurting.”
“Yes.”
“They screwed it up.”
“Yes.”
“I could end up hospitalized.”
“Yes.”
“So don’t lecture me.”
She looked at him.
“You can be frightened without humiliating somebody.”
Silence.
The next morning Diamond apologized to the nurse.
Not through Elena.
Directly.
That was change.
Not perfection.
Years later, people romanticized their story.
The paralyzed mafia boss who had not smiled in years.
The exhausted maid who fell asleep beside him.
He woke.
Saw her.
Smiled.
And suddenly rediscovered love.
Elena hated that version.
“I was unconscious from overtime.”
Diamond would answer:
“Romantic.”
“You were feverish.”
“More romantic.”
“You fired a man the next day.”
“Temporarily.”
She would roll her eyes.
But the story spread anyway.
They left out the wage review.
The rehabilitation.
The resignation.
The five months apart.
Independent attorneys.
The fact that Elena was no longer his employee when romance began.
They especially left out the sentence Diamond thought mattered most.
You owe me nothing because I smiled.
Because people liked the idea that one woman’s kindness healed a dangerous man.
Elena did not heal him.
Doctors treated him.
Therapists rehabilitated him.
Lawyers forced him to confront structures he had avoided.
Employees demanded basic respect.
Time changed him.
Consequences changed him.
And Diamond changed himself only when he repeatedly chose to.
Elena merely refused to participate in the lie that suffering excused everything.
They married when Diamond was fifty-one.
Elena was forty-two.
Small ceremony.
No criminal associates.
No spectacle.
Marcus attended.
Gabriel attended.
Dr. Patel attended and said:
“I still cannot believe you lasted this long.”
Diamond answered:
“I became delightful.”
Elena laughed so loudly the officiant stopped.
Before the wedding they signed another agreement.
Separate property.
Clear estate provisions.
No automatic control over Elena’s career.
Protections for medical decision-making that reflected Diamond’s wishes without treating Elena as unpaid permanent nursing staff.
He continued employing professional caregivers when needed.
That mattered.
A wife is not a medical workforce.
Years passed.
Diamond sold the mansion eventually.
People were shocked.
“Why?”
Elena asked.
He looked around the enormous glass conservatory, marble halls, security doors, and rooms built for a life based on being watched.
“I built this place because I thought walls made me powerful.”
“And?”
“They mostly make the heating bill offensive.”
They bought a smaller accessible house overlooking the river.
Still expensive.
Diamond never became modest enough to pretend otherwise.
Wide doors.
Accessible kitchen.
Lift system.
Garden.
A study with windows low enough that he could see the water from his wheelchair without craning his neck.
Elena chose the bedroom furniture.
Diamond complained.
She ignored him.
At sixty-seven, Diamond’s beard was mostly gray.
His hands had arthritis.
Elena found him one morning holding the old letter he had written on her final day as his employee.
“You kept a copy?”
“Yes.”
“That is very sentimental.”
“I am a terrifying man.”
“You own orthopedic gloves.”
“Terrifying orthopedic gloves.”
She sat beside him.
“Do you remember the chair?”
“The one you nearly died sleeping in?”
“It was comfortable.”
“It was designed by someone who hated spines.”
She smiled.
Then:
“Do you know why I stayed that night?”
“Because you loved me secretly.”
“No.”
He looked wounded.
“Terrible answer.”
“I stayed because you looked scared.”
He became quiet.
“And?”
“I knew what frightened men can do when everyone pretends they’re not frightened.”
Diamond looked at the river.
“You thought I might hurt somebody?”
“I thought you might hurt yourself.”
“By falling?”
“By turning fear into rage until everyone around you disappeared.”
That landed even decades later.
He nodded.
“I almost did.”
“Yes.”
Then he looked at her.
“Why did you come back after quitting?”
Elena smiled.
“That is different.”
“How?”
“When I worked for you, staying could always be confused with a paycheck.”
“And after?”
“I missed you.”
Diamond grinned.
“There it is.”
“Don’t ruin it.”
“I waited thirty years for that confession.”
She laughed.
He reached for her hand.
Not because he needed help.
Because he wanted it.
That distinction had become the foundation of everything.
When Diamond died years later, people again tried to simplify him.
Crime boss.
Paralyzed king.
Monster softened by a maid.
Rich man redeemed by love.
Elena refused all of those versions.
At the memorial, one reporter asked:
“Would you say you saved him?”
Elena looked almost offended.
“No.”
“What did you do?”
“I worked in his house.”
“Then became his wife.”
“Yes.”
“And changed his life.”
She thought.
“People change each other.”
The reporter leaned forward.
“But he smiled because of you.”
Elena shook her head.
“He smiled because something was funny.”
That was Diamond’s favorite kind of answer.
Then she added:
