The forged-document referral went to the prosecutor; Barrett accepted a plea that kept him out of prison and cost him the one thing he had always guarded most — his spotless public name.

The business magazines ran a very different story that year.

Paige did not become anyone’s future wife. She left the company within the month, and I heard she’d been the one who taped the envelope to my door — the only decent thing she did in the whole affair, done for her own reasons.

I never thanked her, and I never needed to.

A year later, the board did learn how the company was actually built. I told them myself, from the head of the table, in the chair that had been mine on paper since the first day.

I didn’t take the CEO job; I didn’t want it. I took the chairmanship, hired a professional to run operations, and set up a fund out of my majority dividends for employees’ children who needed medical care their insurance wouldn’t cover — the thing I’d once done for my own sons in the dark, alone, after midnight.