You know that sound a bespoke Italian leather briefcase makes when it hits a mahogany conference table? That heavy muffled thud that screams, I cost more than your rent, and I hold the fate of your quarterly bonus. I lived for that sound. For ten years, I was the ghost in the machine at Archer and Co.
, the senior strategy analyst who turned red ink into black. I was the woman who whispered in the CEO’s ear when the board was out for blood, the fixer who knew where all the corporate bodies were buried because I was usually the one holding the shovel. Richard, our CEO, a man whose tan was three shades too orange and whose ego was three sizes too big, called me his north star. He’d look me in the eye over a scotch at the Harvard club and say, “Allison, when I move up to chairman, that chief strategy officer chair has your name etched into the lumbar support.
” I believed him. That was my first mistake. My second was assuming competence still mattered in a world run by bloodlines and veneers. The beginning of the end didn’t look like a disaster.
It looked like a twenty-four-year-old girl named Madison. Madison was Richard’s niece. She had an MBA from a university that sounded like a salad dressing brand and the kind of vocal fry that could strip paint off a hatchback. Richard brought her in as a special projects consultant, which is corporate code for we need to give her a salary so she stops trying to become a DJ in Berlin.
“Allison,” Richard had said, leaning over my desk with that used car salesman grin, “take Maddie under your wing. Show her the ropes. Good leadership practice for when you take the big chair next quarter. ”
So I did.
I showed her the ropes. I showed her the financial modeling software. I showed her how to read a P&L statement without passing out from boredom. I spent six months running a daycare center for a girl who thought synergy meant everyone getting along and who asked me if we could expense her therapy dog’s organic kibble.
I fixed her slide decks at 3 a. m. I rewrote her emails so she didn’t sound like a semi-literate influencer. I was polishing the very knife that was about to find a home between my shoulder blades.
The betrayal happened on a Tuesday. It’s always a Tuesday. Tuesdays are the days hope goes to die in a PowerPoint presentation. It was the Q3 all-hands meeting.
The entire company was packed into the main auditorium, fidgeting with their phones, waiting for the usual rah-rah speech about disrupting the paradigm or whatever buzzword salad Richard had tossed together. I was in the front row wearing my future CSO blazer, Armani tailored sharp enough to cut glass. Richard was on stage, pacing back and forth. His hands looked sweaty.
He looked like a man trying to sell a monorail to a town that had already been scammed by a monorail. “We need fresh vision,” Richard bellowed, his voice echoing off the acoustic tiles. “We need agility. We need the kind of forward-thinking leadership that understands the digital native landscape.
”
My stomach dropped. Digital native landscape. The only thing Richard knew about digital natives was that they didn’t like his Facebook posts. “That is why,” Richard continued, gesturing grandly to the wings of the stage, “I am thrilled to announce our new chief strategy officer.
Please welcome Madison Archer. ”
The silence in the room wasn’t just quiet. It was a physical vacuum. I watched Madison bounce onto the stage wearing a pink pantsuit that looked like it was made out of bubblegum, waving to a room full of people who had been working there longer than she had been alive.
“Hi guys! ” she squealed. “Oh my god, I am so pumped to pivot this company into the future. We are going to disrupt everything.
”
I didn’t blink. I couldn’t. I looked at Richard. He caught my eye for a split second, then immediately looked away, feigning interest in Madison’s shoes.
He knew. The coward knew exactly what he had done. He had taken my decade of loyalty, my eighty-hour weeks, my saved deals, and handed them to a girl whose hardest decision in life had been which filter to use on her brunch photo. The applause was scattered, polite, terrified.
Marcus, the CFO, a man who had the personality of a spreadsheet tab but knew quality when he saw it, looked at me. His face was a mask of horror. I didn’t scream. I didn’t flip the table.
I didn’t storm the stage and strangle Richard with his own Hermès tie, although the thought was a vivid, beautiful hallucination. Instead, a cold, metallic calm settled over me. The kind of calm you see in the eye of a hurricane right before the roof gets ripped off. I stood up.
I smoothed my skirt. I walked out while Madison was midway through a sentence about holistic brand vibes. I went straight to my office. I didn’t pack a box.
I didn’t take the framed photo of my dog. I sat down and typed two sentences to Richard Archer: I resigned, effective immediately. Congratulations to Madison. I hit send.
Then I printed it, signed it with a pen that cost more than Madison’s car, and walked it to HR. The HR director, a woman named Linda who lived in fear of her own shadow, looked at the paper, then at me. “Allison,” she whispered, her eyes wide, “are you sure? Richard will flip.
We have the board meeting next week. Who’s going to prep the deck? ”
“Madison is the CSO,” I said, my voice smooth, devoid of any jagged edges. “I’m sure she has a vision for the deck.
Something about pivoting, I believe. ”
“But she doesn’t know how to access the server,” Linda stammered. “Sounds like a strategic challenge,” I said. “Good luck, Linda.
”
I walked out of the building. The New York air smelled like garbage and exhaust, but to me it smelled like liberation. My phone started buzzing. Richard, once, twice, ten times.
I turned the phone off. They thought this was a tantrum. They thought I was just a scorned woman who would go home, drink wine, cry to her therapist, and eventually crawl back for a consulting gig. But I wasn’t just a strategist, Richard.
I was the architect. And you don’t fire the architect after you’ve moved into the house, especially not when the architect is the only one who knows the foundation is built on a sinkhole. I didn’t just leave. I left a void.
And I knew with the mathematical certainty of a well-balanced equation that nature abhors a vacuum. Madison wasn’t ready for the job. But she was certainly ready for the fall. And I intended to be there not to catch her, but to make sure she hit every single branch on the way down.
The next morning, I didn’t wake up to an alarm. I woke up to the silence of a calendar wiped clean of 7 a. m. alignment calls and 8 p.
m. crisis mitigation Zooms. It was disorienting, like stepping off a treadmill that had been running at sprint speed for ten years. But then the rage kicked in.
Not the hot, messy kind that makes you key a car, but the cold, crystalline kind that makes you topple a regime. I had to go back one last time. Exit interviews. I dressed for a funeral.
All black, severe lines, lipstick the color of a fresh arterial wound. When I walked into the lobby, Jason, the receptionist, looked like he was about to cry. “Ms. Dewitt,” he whispered, “it’s chaos upstairs.
Madison ordered a kombucha tap for the break room, but she accidentally canceled the Bloomberg terminal subscriptions to pay for it. ”
“Priorities, Jason,” I said, breezing past security. When the elevator doors opened on the fortieth floor, the atmosphere had shifted. It wasn’t the hum of productivity anymore.
It was the buzz of nervous energy. People were huddled in cubicles, whispering. When they saw me, the whispers stopped dead. Madison was in my office.
She hadn’t even waited for me to clear my things. She was sitting in my ergonomic chair, spinning back and forth, talking loudly on speakerphone. “No, I don’t care about the legacy accounts, Tyler. They’re so, um, energy.
We need to pivot to crypto or NFTs. Are those still a thing? ”
She saw me and stopped spinning. “Oh, hey Allison.
I was just vibing in here. Hope you don’t mind. Richard said it was cool. ”
“It’s all yours, Madison,” I said, my voice flat.
“I’m just here for my files. ”
“Totally. Take whatever. Oh, and hey, no hard feelings, right?
Uncle Richard said you were totally chill about it. ”
I looked at her. Really looked at her. She was a child playing dress-up in a burning building.
“No hard feelings,” I lied. “Just a word of advice. Watch the Q4 projections. The spreadsheet has a macro that auto-updates from the legal server.
If you break the link, the SEC compliance triggers a red flag. ”
Her eyes glazed over. “Macro. Is that like a diet thing?
”
“Something like that. ”
I walked over to the filing cabinet. This was the moment. I unlocked the bottom drawer.
Inside wasn’t a stash of snacks or gym clothes. It was my in-case-of-emergency leverage. But I didn’t take it all. I took the personal items, the decks, the hard drive with my intellectual property.
But I left one thing behind. A single slate gray folder, placed conspicuously on the empty desk surface. It was labeled “Internal Audit and Governance Gaps, 2020-2024. ” Inside was a memo I had written six months ago detailing several procedural anomalies in how Richard handled vendor contracts.
It wasn’t illegal yet. It was sloppy, dangerous, the kind of thing a competent CSO would read, panic over, and fix immediately to protect the CEO. Madison wouldn’t read it. If she did, she wouldn’t understand it.
But someone else would find it eventually. And when they did, it would be proof that the issues were known, documented, and ignored. “Are you going to take the plant? ” Madison asked, pointing to my dying fiddle leaf fig.
“No,” I said. “It needs sunlight and attention. I don’t think it’ll survive the new administration. ”
I walked out of the office, leaving the folder there like a loaded gun on a coffee table.
I went straight to HR. Linda was sweating. “Allison, Richard wants to do the exit interview himself. ”
“No,” I said.
“Standard forms only. I sign the NDA regarding trade secrets. I take my accrued vacation pay, and I leave. If Richard wants to talk to me, he can speak to my attorney.
”
“You have an attorney? ”
“I’m a strategist, Linda. I always have a contingency. ”
I signed the papers.
I didn’t glance at the non-compete clause because I knew it was unenforceable in New York under constructive dismissal pretenses, which giving my job to his niece arguably was. But I wasn’t going to fight them in court for a settlement. That was too small, too petty. I wanted the kingdom.
Or rather, I wanted to watch the kingdom burn so I could roast marshmallows over the embers. As I walked to the elevator, Richard burst out of his corner office. “Allison! ” He looked disheveled.
“Don’t be dramatic. Come back inside. We can create a role for you. Senior adviser to the CSO.
We’ll keep your salary the same. ”
The audacity was breathtaking. He wanted me to be the brain while Madison wore the crown. He wanted me to do the work while she took the credit, all for the low price of my dignity.
“Richard,” I said, loud enough for the bullpen to hear, “I don’t do adviser, and I certainly don’t do babysitting. You wanted a new direction. You got it. Enjoy the view.
”
The elevator doors closed on his red, sputtering face. To understand how I was going to gut Richard, you have to go back three years. It was a rainy November in 2021. We were courting Greenpoint Capital, a private equity firm with pockets deeper than the Mariana Trench and a reputation for being about as warm and fuzzy as a velociraptor.
Richard was terrified of their lead counsel, a man named Gordon Bain. Gordon didn’t argue. He just stared at you until you questioned your own existence. We were in the final hours of negotiations.
It was 2 a. m. , and the conference room smelled like stale pizza and high-stakes desperation. Gordon was sitting across from me, looking fresh as a daisy.
I was running on caffeine and spite. “We need a safeguard,” Gordon said, tapping his Montblanc pen on the table. “Greenpoint isn’t in the business of funding vanity projects. If leadership fails, we need a trigger to protect our investment.
”
Dave, our lawyer, bristled. “We can’t give you a board majority. Richard won’t sign it. ”
Gordon looked at me.
He knew I was the one actually building the model. I saw an opening. “What if we add a conditional clause? ” I suggested, keeping my voice steady.
“Not a board majority by default, but a competency trigger. If specific KPIs drop below a certain threshold for two consecutive quarters, or if there is a material breach of governance protocols, Greenpoint gets temporary voting override to restructure the suite. ”
Dave frowned. “Richard won’t like ‘restructure.
’”
“Call it strategic realignment capability,” I said. “He loves the word strategic. He won’t read the definition. ”
Gordon’s eyes narrowed.
He looked at me, really looked at me for the first time. He saw exactly what I was doing. I was building a fire escape for the investors and a trap door for the CEO. “Article 7D,” Gordon said, a small, terrifying smile touching his lips.
“Strategic realignment due to governance failure or material mismanagement. ”
We drafted it right there. The language was dense, buried in the middle of page 142 of the shareholder rights agreement. It defined material mismanagement broadly, including hiring of unqualified executive personnel without independent board review and gross negligence regarding compliance reporting.
The next morning, Richard breezed in to sign the final documents. He was hungover, wearing sunglasses indoors. “Did we get the valuation we wanted? ” he asked, hovering the pen over the signature line.
“Yes,” I said. “We got the money. And you still have 51% voting rights as long as the company performs. ”
“Great.
Boring legal mumbo jumbo,” he laughed, and scrawled his signature. He didn’t read a single word. He was too busy thinking about the press release. Gordon shook Richard’s hand, but he looked at me.
A silent nod. Game recognized game. Article 7D wasn’t just a clause. It was a kill switch.
And Madison, with her kombucha taps and her complete lack of regulatory knowledge, wasn’t just pressing buttons in the cockpit. She was dancing on the launch codes. All I had to do was wait for the material mismanagement to become undeniable. It took exactly three weeks for the wheels to come off.
I wasn’t surprised by the crash. I was surprised by the velocity. It was like watching a toddler try to pilot a Boeing 747. Madison’s first major initiative was something called Project Neon.
Archer and Co. made its money providing boring, reliable logistics analytics to boring, reliable manufacturing firms. Madison decided this was stale. She wanted to pivot to lifestyle logistics.
She fired the external compliance auditing firm we had used for seven years because, in her words, “Their logo is ugly and their lead auditor gives me bad energy. ” She replaced them with a boutique agency her friend Tyler ran. They did crypto consulting. That was strike one.
Strike two came at the vendor town hall. Madison showed up twenty minutes late wearing a headset microphone like she was doing a TED Talk. She didn’t have slides. She had a mood board.
“We’re moving away from rigid contracts,” she told a room full of steel manufacturers and shipping magnates. “We want our partnership to flow like water. We want to operate on trust and blockchain vibes. ”
When a supplier asked if that meant changing payment terms, she replied, “Payment terms are so binary.
We’re looking at dynamic value exchange. ” Translation: We aren’t going to pay you on time. Within 48 hours, three major vendors paused their shipments. I sat in my living room downloading every report, every leaked email, every panicked text message.
I was building a dossier. The cherry on top was the Q3 financial revision. Because Madison didn’t understand the macro I warned her about, she had manually entered revenue projections into the master deck. She added a zero.
Instead of projecting 4% growth, she projected 40%. Richard, desperate for a win, signed off on it without checking the math. They sent the preliminary guidance to the investors, including Greenpoint Capital. It was fraud.
Accidental, incompetent fraud, but fraud nonetheless. It was time. I picked up my phone and dialed a number I hadn’t called in three years. “Gordon Bain’s office,” the assistant answered.
“This is Allison Dewitt. Tell Gordon I have an update on Article 7D. And tell him to bring the good wine. ”
The wine bar was dark, expensive, and quiet enough to plan a murder.
I was sitting in a corner booth when Gordon walked in. He hadn’t aged a day. He still looked like a shark that had learned to walk upright and wear Tom Ford. “Allison,” he said, sliding into the booth opposite me.
“You look rested. Unemployment suits you. ”
“Consulting, Gordon. I’m a free agent.
And I assume this meeting isn’t just to catch up on old times. ”
“I hear you received the preliminary Q3 guidance from Archer and Co. yesterday,” I said, skipping the pleasantries. “Aggressive numbers.
Richard is bullish. 40% growth in a stagnating logistics market. ”
“It’s a typo,” I said. Gordon froze.
“Excuse me. ”
I slid the binder across the table. “Open to tab three. ” He did.
He saw the side-by-side comparison: my original model showing 4% growth, and Madison’s Project Neon slide showing 40% with the manual entry clearly highlighted. “She broke the formula link. She thought the cell looked lonely, so she typed in a number that felt right. ”
“If this is true,” Gordon said, his jaw tightening, “they just submitted false guidance to a majority shareholder.
That’s securities fraud. ”
“It’s material mismanagement,” I said, emphasizing the phrase we both knew by heart. “Turn to tab four. ”
Tab four was the email chain about firing the compliance auditor and hiring Tyler’s crypto consultancy.
“She fired Deloitte for a vibe mismatch and replaced them with an uncertified entity owned by a personal friend. That triggers the vendor integrity clause in the investment agreement. It’s a breach of covenant. ”
Gordon closed the binder.
He placed his hand on top of it. The shark smelled blood. “Why are you giving me this, Allison? ” he asked, studying my face.
“You want the CEO chair? We invoke 7D, decapitate Richard, and install you as the savior? ”
“No,” I said. “I don’t want the chair.
I don’t want to fix the mess she made. I’ve spent ten years fixing Richard’s messes. I’m done being the janitor. ”
“Then what do you want?
”
“I want the record corrected. I want them to know that competence isn’t hereditary. And I want to watch the look on Richard’s face when he realizes that the boring legal mumbo jumbo he ignored is the thing that ends him. ”
Gordon smiled.
“Article 7D requires an emergency board session. We can call it for governance concerns. We don’t have to specify the evidence until we’re in the room. ”
“Tuesday,” I said.
“The board meets on Tuesday. ”
“Tuesday it is. ”
We stood up. Gordon shook my hand.
“You’re a dangerous woman, Allison Dewitt. ”
“I’m just a strategist, Gordon. Strategy is just the art of making sure the consequences land on the right people. ”
The weekend before the board meeting felt like the heavy, charged air before a tornado touches down.
Madison announced Project Neon would launch on Monday. It was a disaster. The website crashed because they hadn’t paid the server hosting fees. The new dynamic pricing model confused the automated ordering systems of our three biggest clients, causing a backlog of $12 million in orders that vanished into the digital ether.
At 4 p. m. , Gordon moved fast. He sent a formal notice to the company secretary.
Emergency board meeting requested by Greenpoint Capital. Agenda: review of governance protocols and Q3 guidance discrepancies. Richard called me at 6 p. m.
“Allison! Listen, we have a board check-in tomorrow. Greenpoint is being fussy. I need you.
”
“I’m busy, Richard. ”
“Busy doing what? You’re unemployed. ”
“I’m strategizing,” I said.
“Just come in tomorrow. 9 a. m. ”
“I’ll be there, Richard.
I said you will. ”
“Oh, thank God. I knew you were a team player. ”
“I didn’t say I was coming to help, Richard.
”
“What? ”
“I said I’ll be there. Goodbye. ”
Tuesday morning dawned gray and rainy.
I arrived at the building at 8:45. My badge hadn’t been deactivated yet. Another oversight by Madison. I didn’t go to the strategy floor.
I went to the executive floor. The boardroom had glass walls, frosted in the center but clear at the top and bottom. A fishbowl. I saw them inside.
Richard was pacing. Madison was sitting at the head of the table, scrolling on her phone, looking bored. I stood in the hallway near the coffee cart, just out of direct sight. Marcus walked by.
“Allison,” he whispered. “What are you doing? ”
“Just watching the market correct itself. You might want to go inside.
You don’t want to miss the opening act. ”
Then the elevator pinged. Gordon Bain stepped out. He wasn’t alone.
He had two junior associates carrying boxes of files, and a man in a gray suit who looked painfully like a forensic accountant. Gordon saw me. He didn’t wave. He just adjusted his tie and walked toward the boardroom door.
Gordon pushed open the heavy glass doors. The conversation inside died instantly. “This isn’t a discussion about growing pains, Richard,” Gordon said. His voice carried to the back of the room.
It carried out into the hallway where I was standing. “This is a formal invocation of Article 7D of the shareholder rights agreement. ”
Madison looked up from her phone. “Article what?
Is that like a bylaw, boring? ”
Gordon ignored her. He pulled a single document from his briefcase, thick and stapled, flagged with red tabs. He slid it down the long mahogany table.
It came to rest in front of Richard. “Notice of leadership disqualification proceedings,” Gordon stated. Richard stared at the paper. “Disqualification?
You can’t. I have majority voting rights. I own this company. ”
“Not under conditions of material mismanagement.
We have evidence of securities fraud regarding the Q3 guidance. We have evidence of gross negligence in vendor compliance. And we have documentation of willful destruction of internal governance controls. ”
“That was just a projection.
A draft. ”
“Submitted to the investor portal. That makes it a binding disclosure. And since the numbers were manually entered, overriding the financial model, it constitutes intent to deceive.
”
The room went deadly silent. The other board members, old money types who cared about nothing but their own liability, started shifting in their seats. They looked at Richard like he was radioactive. “But Madison did the deck!
” Richard stammered, throwing his own niece under the bus without a second of hesitation. “She’s the CSO. She prepared the numbers. ”
Gordon turned his gaze to Madison.
Her confidence evaporated. “I just thought 40% looked better,” she said, her voice trembling. “It was a manifestation goal. ”
“You manifested a federal crime, Miss Archer,” Gordon said coldly.
He signaled to the forensic accountant. “You’re freezing all executive authority effective immediately. An external audit team is on its way up. Security will escort the current suite off the premises pending the investigation.
”
“You can’t do this! ” Richard shouted, slamming his hand on the table. “Allison! Where is Allison?
She can explain this. She knows the model. ”
“Allison isn’t here to save you, Richard. She’s the one who documented the fire while you were handing out matches.
”
Richard froze. He looked around the room wild-eyed. Then he saw me, standing just outside the glass wall in my white suit. I wasn’t smiling.
I wasn’t gloating. I was just watching, impassive, like a judge at a sentencing hearing. The board voted on the suspension motion. Every hand went up except Richard’s and Madison’s.
Two uniformed guards stepped into the room. Madison started crying. “But my office, I just bought a velvet couch. ”
“Leave the couch,” the guard said.
Richard stopped near the door. He looked at me through the open glass. He looked old, defeated. “You built this trap,” he whispered.
“I built a safety net for the company, Richard,” I said, stepping forward so only he could hear. “You just decided to jump without checking if you were caught by it. ”
After they were escorted out, the board chairman, a man named Sterling who wore bowties unironically, cleared his throat. He looked at the empty chairs at the head of the table.
Then he looked at Gordon. Then everyone looked at me standing in the doorway. “Ms. Dewitt,” Sterling said, his voice dripping with sudden sycophantic warmth, “perhaps you should join us.
”
I walked into the room. I didn’t sit in Richard’s chair. I didn’t sit in Madison’s. I stood at the end of the table, leaning against the credenza.
“We had no idea the extent of the mismanagement,” Sterling said. “You had the quarterly reports,” I said calmly. “You had the audit memos. You chose not to read them because the dividends were clearing.
”
“Yes, well,” he stammered. “We must look forward. We need an interim CEO and a competent chief strategy officer to clean up this Project Neon mess. The board is prepared to offer you the CSO position effective immediately with a significant equity package.
”
“Triple whatever it takes,” Sterling cried. “We need someone who knows the codes. ”
It was everything I had wanted three weeks ago. The title, the money, the validation.
I could sit in that chair, fire the incompetent offense, rebuild the strategy, and rule the kingdom I had saved. I looked at the faces around the table. Old, frightened men who only valued competence when their own necks were on the line. I felt nothing.
The ambition had evaporated the moment I saw Richard dragged out. It wasn’t my kingdom anymore. It was a crime scene. “I appreciate the offer, Mr.
Sterling,” I said. The room held its breath. “But I decline. ”
Sterling’s jaw dropped.
“Decline? But you wanted this. You engineered this. ”
“I engineered accountability,” I said.
“I didn’t engineer a job interview. ”
“But who will run the strategy? ” Marcus asked, panicking. “I recommend you promote Sarah from the analytics team,” I said.
“She’s smart, she’s diligent, and she actually read the compliance manual. She can handle the interim role. ”
“The girl with the nose ring? ”
“The woman with the master’s in data science.
She’s your best bet. ”
I pushed off the credenza. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a lunch reservation. ”
“Where are you going?
” Sterling called out. “What are you going to do? ”
I paused at the door. “I’m going to start my own firm.
And my first client is Greenpoint Capital. We’re going to be looking very closely at mid-market companies with governance issues. I suggest you keep your house in order, Mr. Sterling.
”
I walked out. Gordon caught my eye one last time and gave me a barely perceptible nod. A salute from one predator to another. Two months later, Richard took an early retirement due to health reasons.
He moved to Florida. Madison tried to pivot to being a lifestyle coach on TikTok. Last I checked, she had four hundred followers and was trying to sell a course on corporate manifestation. She was irrelevant.
Archer and Co. survived, barely. Sarah, the analyst I recommended, stepped up. She calls me sometimes for advice.
I bill her my full hourly rate. She pays it happily. As for me, I’m sitting in my new office in Tribeca. Exposed brick, big windows, no mahogany tables.
The sign on the door says Dewitt Strategic. Gordon Bain and I have a standing arrangement. He finds the companies that are rotting from the inside, and I go in and perform the surgery. I received a package yesterday.
No return address. Inside was a framed photo of the Archer and Co. executive team from five years ago. Tucked into the frame was a note on Richard’s personal stationery: “You were always the smartest person in the room.
I just forgot that meant you were smarter than me. ”
I tossed the photo in the trash. I kept the frame. It was high quality.
Revenge isn’t a dish. It’s a deliverable. It’s a project with a timeline, KPIs, and a critical path. And if you execute it correctly, it doesn’t just feel like winning.
It feels like balancing the books. I took a sip of my coffee. My phone buzzed. A LinkedIn notification: Madison Archer has viewed your profile.
I smiled. Let her look. I opened my laptop. I had a new client meeting in ten minutes.
A CEO in Chicago who thought he could hire his mistress as the CFO. Poor guy. He has no idea I’m coming.