Richard Vance did not panic.
In fifteen years of building this, panic had never once solved a problem for him, and he saw no reason to abandon the principle now, even with his son's accusation still hanging in the air of his office like smoke that wouldn't clear.
He gave himself exactly ten minutes at the window. Then he began, methodically, to do what he had always done when something threatened to slip out of his control.
By noon, his general counsel and two of the city's most expensive litigators were assembled in the same conference room where Richard had once celebrated the company's first billion-dollar valuation.
"I want to know our exposure," he said, not sitting, pacing along the length of the window with the restless energy of a man who had not, in fact, entirely mastered his
