They did not need me to raise my voice or produce a single tear.

They simply sat there, dated and totaled and undeniable, and every person in that room who could read a spreadsheet understood exactly what they were looking at.

I had insisted on that.

The forensic team had wanted, at first, to include more — the messages, the photographs, the tawdry human texture that makes a scandal go around a building by lunchtime.

I had said no, and held the line.