There was a particular justice in that sentence that only Lucan and I fully appreciated in the moment, because Lucan had written that clause himself.

Years earlier, negotiating his own contract, he had insisted on the five-year compensation guarantee as protection against exactly the kind of corporate takeover that had just occurred — a golden parachute, so that if new owners ever pushed him out, he’d walk away wealthy.

He had been so proud of that clause.

He had mentioned it to me more than once, as evidence of his own cleverness, his foresight, his understanding of how these things worked.

What he had never bothered to notice — because it would have required imagining a scenario where he was the one who’d done something wrong — was the standard exception written into every such clause: without cause. The parachute only opens if you’re pushed out for no reason.

It does not open if you’re terminated for fraud.