And I did not.

I did not raise my hand.

I did not touch her.

I stood there with my cheek stinging and my head high, and I let the instinct move through me and out the other side, and I did the single most powerful thing available to me in that room, which was nothing at all.

I kept my hands at my sides.

Because in the half-second after her palm hit my face, a cold and clear part of my mind — the part that had built a company, that read contracts for a living, that understood exactly what had just happened in legal terms — had already spoken, and what it said was this: She just handed you everything.