And I, it turned out, was not a random victim.

I was a key.

Through my work as a senior auditor, I had — without knowing what I was looking at — reviewed corporate documents tied to the shell companies behind this very development, and they needed my professional signature to validate a set of fraudulent property transfers.

The whole four-month campaign against me had a single, cold, commercial purpose: to break me, and frighten me, and compromise me, until I signed.

“Just sign the paperwork,” Raymond said, “and this ends.