The man had built the case against himself, transaction by transaction, over six months, and all I did was gather what he had already created and place it in front of the people entitled to see it.

There is a particular justice in that, in a downfall assembled entirely from the perpetrator’s own documented choices, in which the one who exposes the wrong adds nothing and invents nothing but merely holds up a mirror.

I held up the mirror.

What Julian saw in it was himself.

Chapter 15 — Two Security Guards

On Tuesday morning, my attorney delivered a formal, meticulously documented dossier to the executive compliance board of Julian’s firm.

The report laid it all out, cleanly and undeniably: the pattern of expensed hotels and dinners and trips, cross-referenced against the private investigator’s timeline, demonstrating that thousands of dollars in company funds had been used, over six months, to conduct a personal affair with a subordinate employee, a subordinate whom Julian, as a senior associate, was in a position of power over.