Then I dried my face, and I picked up my phone, and I called a business attorney.

I have thought often about that instruction of my grandfather’s — anyone can burn a house down; use power because it is necessary, not because you are angry — because it is, I think, the single wisest thing anyone ever said to me, and because I have watched so many people, handed sudden power, get it exactly backward.

There is an enormous, intoxicating temptation, when you have been wronged and you suddenly hold the means to answer it, to use everything you have, all at once, as hard as you can.

To make it hurt.

To make it total.

To burn the whole house down and stand in the light of it.