And somewhere in the process of taking Arthur Vance apart to free his wife, I had discovered that the same skills, pointed at the right targets, could do something more than balance a corporation’s books.

They could free people.

So that is what my firm does now, alongside the corporate work: we help people — very often women — who have been financially trapped, robbed, and controlled by someone with more power than they had, and we find the money, and we trace the truth, and we hand them back the leverage that was taken from them.

My assistant, Maya, brought me the final closing documents that morning — the last papers confirming that the court-ordered trust transfers were complete and the Vance estate restructuring officially finalized.