The people who commit financial crimes are, almost without exception, people like Marcus: confident, charismatic, contemptuous of paperwork, certain that the real action is in the deal and the handshake and the bold move, dismissive of the quiet person in the corner reading the documents.

They cut their corners in front of that quiet person because they do not believe the quiet person matters, do not believe anyone is really looking, do not believe that reading the paperwork could ever threaten a man of action like themselves.

And they are wrong, catastrophically, every time, because the quiet person reading the paperwork is the one who sees everything.

My entire career had been built on a truth Marcus was too arrogant to grasp: that being underestimated is not a weakness but a weapon, that the person no one takes seriously is the person who can see the most, precisely because no one bothers to hide from her.