She was the strong one, held prisoner without tools.

Give the tools back, and watch what the strong ones do.

Chapter 16 — The Firm

Eighteen months after the signatures dried, the morning sun came through the glass of a high-rise in downtown Los Angeles, across the brass lettering beside my own frosted doors: Sterling Financial Forensics and Asset Recovery.

I had left the firm I worked for and opened my own, because the whole affair had clarified something for me about the work I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

I had spent my career tracing hidden money for institutions — cold, impersonal, a game of numbers.