She had engineered the collapse and then pointed at the wreckage as vindication.

I have investigated a great many business disputes in forty years, and I have rarely encountered a scheme as elegant, in its cold way, as the one Selina built, because it had a self-sealing quality that made it nearly impossible to fight from the inside.

Consider its structure.

First, you secretly destroy the man’s finances and his business.

Then, when he is broke and desperate and frantic — as any human being would be, watching his life’s work die for reasons he cannot understand — you present that very desperation as evidence of the instability you accused him of in the first place.

His panic proves your claim.