That same month, Josephine joined as chief legal counsel.

Her starting salary was two hundred and eighty thousand dollars, plus huge bonuses.

My job was photocopying documents, booking conference rooms, and fetching bitter coffee for executives who never bothered to learn my name.

I wasn’t invited to a single meeting. I was never shown a single contract. But I watched. And I listened.

I discovered something about myself during those long, lonely hours in the copy room. I could spot patterns other people missed entirely.

When executives talked over deals in the hallway, I sketched diagrams of the relationships between the parties, the flow of money, the potential conflicts.