Used correctly, patiently, with good documents and a good attorney, it was the most devastating weapon available to me, and it had one quality that revenge could never match: it was clean.

When you burn someone down yourself, you are left holding the match, and the ash gets on you, and some part of the wrong transfers to your hands.

But a court order carries no such stain.

When the accounts froze, it was not my rage that froze them; it was a judge, looking at Damon’s own emails, applying the law to facts he himself had created.

When the auditors reconstructed those fourteen transactions, it was not my accusation that convicted him; it was arithmetic.