I let the chair complete its slow turn until I faced her fully. Talia’s irritated expression froze, then cracked, then collapsed into something I had waited days to see. Recognition. The pathetic old woman she had ordered out of a birthday dinner, the jealous mother-in-law she had mocked while I mopped a few feet away, was sitting behind the largest desk on the executive floor with her name printed on a folder in front of me.

“Sit down, Talia,” I said quietly. Her mouth opened and closed. She gripped the back of the chair to steady herself. “You,” she whispered. “You own…” She could not finish it. So I finished it for her. “Meridian Technologies. Yes. The company that has employed you for eighteen months. The company where you humiliated three people old enough to be your parents. Sit down. We are going to talk about every one of them.”