You are certain you are right and everybody disagrees. You:

Proceed. The arithmetic does not care how it feels.Point out precisely who benefits from you being wrong.Do it anyway. You have been right before and nobody listened.Wait, build the position, and be proved right in public.

What made you like this?

Pressure, for years, until something in you split.Looking clearly at people, and not being impressed.Being written out of the story you were meant to be in.One humiliation, in public, that nobody else remembers.

Your relationship with the people you are doing it for:

They will thank you afterwards. They do not have to now.You are all that stands between them and it happening again.There is a version of you they love, and you are not always him.They chose somebody else. You were the one who was owed it.

How do you argue?

With facts they cannot contest and a rage they cannot match.From above. You will not be dragged down into it.Logically, and it is genuinely difficult to answer you.Quietly, once, with what happens next left implied.

What would you sacrifice?

Anything. That is what makes it a sacrifice and not a preference.Nothing of yours. That is rather the point of the position.You already sacrificed the person you used to be.Anybody, except the one person you keep out of it.

The thing you would never forgive:

Being told to wait, politely, by people who were comfortable.Watching it happen once, and being told it would not again.Being built for a purpose and then held back from it.Having your name taken off it.

Pick the thing people get wrong about you:

They think it is cruelty. It is a decision, taken long ago.They think you wanted it burned down. You wanted your share.They think you are the mask. You wish you were.They think you hate them. You have simply audited them.

How do you take power?

By making it clear what happens if you are pushed further.By being obviously the most capable person in the room.By returning, in front of everybody, and claiming what was yours.Slowly, legally, and by owning the things nobody looks at.

What are you actually afraid of?

That you will do all of it and it still will not be enough.That under the armour there is only the humiliated one.That you were made carelessly, by people who did not think.That they will simply carry on as though you never existed.

You have won. What now?

Make sure that it can never be taken back.Build somewhere they will always be safe, and guard the door.It does not feel like anything, which is the worst part.Go home for dinner. It was only ever business.

Pick a line you would actually say:

"I am not asking you to like it.""You knew. All of you knew.""I have seen where this ends.""You will address me properly."

A hundred years on, the sentence in the history:

"There were two of them, and one of them was loved.""Right about the problem, wrong about everything else.""They were owed it, and they came back for it.""Everything went through them, and nothing was written down."