He Kept Me on a $1,800 Allowance and Called Me a Kept Housewife. He Never Checked Who Held the Deciding Vote on the Company He Was Trying to Buy

Thornton.

You are stripped of your executive authority, effective now, pending a full forensic audit by federal regulators.

Leave the premises.”

Chapter 15 — The Fallout

Six months later, the morning sun came through the floor-to-ceiling windows of my own office, in downtown Philadelphia, above a door that read Whitman Financial Advisory.

I sat at my desk with a warm cup of coffee — bought without a flicker of guilt — and read through the finalized decrees.

Barrett’s fall had been total, and none of it had required a single vindictive act from me; the facts, once they were allowed into the light, did all the work themselves.