But the larger part was strategic and true: Julian was stealing from his firm, and his firm’s partners and investors were his other victims, and they deserved the evidence, and doing it publicly, with the board present and process servers in the room, made it impossible for him to bury or spin or quietly settle away.

So for fourteen days I did the hardest acting of my life.

I made his coffee.

I laughed at his jokes.

I let him kiss my forehead and talk about “saving for Leo’s future,” and every touch made my skin crawl, and I held my ground, and I counted down the days.

Eleanor had explained the logic to me, and it was the same logic that had kept me silent at the dinner table, only sharpened now by a professional who had run it a hundred times.

“The instinct,” she said, “is always to move the moment you have proof.