Over the weekend, in explaining why he and his client plan to keep pressing ahead, Avenatti brought up something Cohen had said to me in an interview in March, as the Daniels issue was kicking into high gear. In the interview, Cohen told me that he believed he would prevail in the case and that Daniels would be paying him damages. He initially said that any money she paid him would first go to paying lawyers, and then to charities, before taking a step back. “You know what?” he added at the time. “The more I’m thinking about it, I might even take an extended vacation on her dime.”

After months of acrimony and legal back-and-forth, there was a brief window where the ire between them thawed; in July, I reported that the two men ran into each other at dinner, where they had a lengthy conversation that Avenatti told me at the time was “productive.” Cohen, who has only spoken on the record once since the criminal investigation into him came to light in April, declined to comment on the interaction.

Whatever steps they’d taken that night were forgotten by the time Cohen’s attorney wrote the judge this weekend and Avenatti responded seeking to continue on. “He’s threatened her from the beginning and we aren’t going anywhere,” Avenatti told me. “The only question is am I going to be deposing Cohen outside of a prison or inside a prison.”

Cohen could face up to 65 years in prison, when a federal judge in the Southern District of New York sentences him in mid-December, though he is likely to be sentenced to far less. It’s a reality that he has begun accepting in recent weeks, according to people familiar with his thinking. Foremost on his mind is the impact his potential incarceration will have on his family. But a close second is the sense of injustice he feels at having pleaded guilty while Trump—the man who allegedly had an affair with Daniels, and who allegedly directed him to pay her off—continues to deny wrongdoing and has not faced any consequences. “None of this would have happened if he was not involved with Trump,” Cohen’s friend told me. “At some point in time, the man has to take responsibility for something. It can’t always be on Michael’s back.”

Of course, Cohen pleaded guilty for a number of reasons. One reason, according to those close to him, is that Cohen was ready to tell the truth about Trump. Another is that his plea may have limited the chance that prosecutors will bring further charges against him. He wanted to shield his wife from legal jeopardy, and going to trial would have easily bankrupted him. He probably would have lost anyway. He felt squeezed on every side. As I reported last month, talks between Cohen’s attorneys and prosecutors began only a few days before Cohen signed the plea agreement, suggesting that the government offered a short timetable. Otherwise, he would have been indicted. “There was no choice,” one longtime friend told me over the weekend. “What was he supposed to do in that situation? And now, his life will never be the same. What life, really?”

Cohen no longer has an office to go to each day, or clients to call. He isn’t entertaining some of the job prospects he once had. Under the conditions of his bail, he is permitted to leave the Southern or Eastern Districts of New York only to go to Florida, where some members of his family live, or to Illinois, where he has some business, and to Washington, D.C., where the special counsel and his team are located. According to his attorney Lanny Davis, he is prepared to be as useful to prosecutors as he can be. On Tuesday, CNN reported that Cohen’s attorney was set to meet with New York State tax-department investigators who are looking into the Trump Organization.

Hanging over it all, however, is the unshakeable feeling that he got the short end of the stick in a relationship where he was always going to be expendable. Last year, Cohen told me in an interview that he would take a bullet for the president. But the year since has presented a cruel lesson in the limits of Trump’s loyalty, and the ways in which the justice system can protect the president from liability. At some point, perhaps, Cohen thought he would be protected by a friend in the Oval Office. Now, he is a man on an island all his own—unsure of how much time he could face, or if investigators will find what he knows useful enough to cut a deal or recommend a lighter sentence. He feels he’s already taken a bullet for the president. The question now is how bad the wound could be.