He truly did experience it as my betrayal rather than as the consequence of his own.

That is not a pose; it is a genuine feature of the way such men are built.

The rules are for other people, and the machinery of accountability is a kind of weather that happens to the unlucky, and when it finally arrives at their own door they feel, with complete sincerity, that something has gone wrong with the universe, that a promise has been broken, that they of all people were owed an exemption.

“I performed due diligence on a company I was buying,” I said.