People expected me to, and I understood why, but the truth was quieter and harder to explain.

I had not set out to ruin anyone.

I had set out to save a company and to stop being made small, and the ruin of the two people who had tried to make me small was simply the lawful consequence of their own choices, arriving, at last, on schedule.

Chapter 16 — The Company After

The hardest work began the morning after the party, and it had nothing to do with Damian.

A company does not heal because a thief has been removed from it any more than a wound heals the instant the glass is pulled out.