Ryan tried strategy next. Public rehabilitation, private pleading, hints to the press that I was unstable after childbirth, whispers through intermediaries that I had “isolated myself from ordinary life” because wealth distorts women and power makes them paranoid. It might have worked if he hadn’t spent the previous year leaving such thick trails—expenses, texts, complaints, recordings, promotions tied to flirtation, denials tied to retaliation. The ugliness of his pattern outlived the charm of his denials.
Violet resigned by week three.
Two other women came forward after that. Then a third. Not all with criminal claims, not all with catastrophic stories, but enough. The kind of accumulation that makes a company realize it did not have one man with a temper problem. It had a leader who understood female discomfort as part of the compensation structure. I authorized settlements where appropriate, investigations where necessary, and once, alone in my office after midnight, I let myself imagine how many women would have remained silent forever if he had not shoved the wrong wife toward the wrong alley.
There is a terrible kind of providence in that.