Conrad walked away with his wardrobe, a mountain of legal debt, and a name no one in the industry would touch.

There was a grim instructiveness in watching Blair and Conrad turn on each other at the end.

For all their talk of a we, for all that I did it for us, the partnership lasted exactly as long as it was profitable and not one day longer.

The moment the money and the protection evaporated, Blair stood in a courtroom and called Conrad her coercer, and Conrad, through his lawyers, called Blair a delusional employee who had acted alone.

Each tried to feed the other to the machinery to save themselves, and neither succeeded, because the evidence did not care whose idea it had been.

I felt no satisfaction watching it — I had passed beyond satisfaction into something quieter — but I did note the lesson, the same lesson I have seen play out every time the powerful are finally made to answer: that a bond built on shared appetite is not a bond at all.