Chapter 14: Expansion text
In the fourth year I hired a fourth analyst and opened a second small office in a building that did not carry any residual Mercer history.
The decision was practical. Demand had exceeded the capacity of the original rooms. I financed the expansion from operating reserves and kept the equity structure unchanged. No external narrative about vindication or revenge accompanied the lease signing. The work simply required more square footage and more careful people. I provided both.
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My parents’ names appeared in no further messages. Vanessa’s professional trail grew thinner and then irrelevant to any search I had reason to run. The forecasting system I had built years earlier still operated, in modified form, inside whatever residual entity had purchased the useful pieces of the old company. I felt neither ownership nor injury at the knowledge. The original authorship remained documented in the records that had mattered when the lenders needed them. After that, the code’s continued usefulness belonged to whoever maintained it.
At home the apartment held the quiet accumulation of a life no longer organized around proving or disproving someone else’s verdict. Adrian cooked on the nights he was not traveling. I handled the mornings that required early client calls. We planned a short trip for the following spring without needing to clear the plan past any family committee. The absence of that committee remained one of the more durable improvements the wedding had produced.
