He left the marriage with his personal savings, which were themselves frozen not long after as suspected criminal proceeds.

The criminal case took eleven months.

Faced with the servers, the statements, the metadata, the sheer tidy mountain of documentation he had generated himself, Rupert pleaded guilty to wire fraud, attempted theft of trade secrets, and forgery.

He was sentenced to six years in federal prison and ordered to pay restitution he will be paying for the rest of his working life.

Cressida understood, too late, that loyalty offered at the end is worth far less than loyalty offered at the start; she cooperated when there was nothing left to trade, received three years, and lost every professional license she had used to make herself appear untouchable.

Her brother’s firms were unwound, the stolen money clawed back into the company it came from.

I did not celebrate any of it.

I want to be honest about that, because the story would be tidier if I told you I felt triumphant.

What I felt, mostly, was tired, and underneath the tiredness, something quieter and more durable: the specific peace of a woman who has stopped being underestimated, and does not intend to allow it again.

I thought I would feel more toward Cressida, and I was surprised to find I didn’t.