And so his contempt, which felt to him like clear-eyed realism, made him reckless in the one way that mattered, because contempt always does.

It is the oldest hole in the oldest trap.

The powerful grow careless in front of the people they have decided do not matter, and the people they have decided do not matter are therefore the ones perfectly positioned to destroy them.

I had spent my whole career watching executives commit exactly this error on paper — leaving damning notes in emails to assistants they never imagined would be read, because who reads what an assistant keeps.

Mason committed it out loud, to my face, into a running camera, for the simple reason that he could not conceive of me as someone who would ever be in a position to use it.