Chapter 12
“Did you enjoy the fall?” I asked.
The officer took her arm and turned her around.
Madison sobbed openly as the handcuffs clicked into place.
Outside the boardroom, the entire floor had frozen into a tableau of shock. Sarah from HR was already recording on her phone. George looked like he might faint.
Robert closed his briefcase with a satisfied snap.
“I’ll have a team of auditors in here by tomorrow to retrieve your one hundred twenty-eight thousand, Diana. Though, given the state of the company’s finances, we may end up seizing servers and office furniture to cover it.”
“Take it all,” I said. “Burn it to the studs.”
I walked out of the boardroom.
The bullpen was silent.
Seventy people watched as I returned to my office, picked up my three cardboard boxes, and headed for the elevator.
Tom from IT was waiting by the doors.
He swiped his master badge and called the elevator for me.
“Servers are backed up,” he said quietly. “And I locked Nate out of the administrative controls, just in case he tries to delete anything from a holding cell.”
I smiled for the first time all day.
“You’re a good man, Tom.”
The elevator doors slid open.
“Polish up your résumé,” I told him as I stepped inside. “I’ll be calling you in a few weeks.”
His eyebrows rose.
Then he grinned.
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
The doors closed.
Only then, for the first time since Friday, did I let myself breathe.
I had not screamed.
I had not begged.
I had not fought in the moment they expected me to.
I had simply stepped aside and let greedy people walk directly into the trap they built with their own hands.
That was the thing about entitlement.
It makes people sloppy.
And desperation makes them stupid.
Together, they are devastating.
Especially when the woman they tried to humiliate knows exactly how to wait.