Wait... it's the day my coworker gets credit for my idea in the meeting. I know exactly what happens next

Three months later, the freezing winter sleet of January had descended upon Chicago, encasing the granite bridges of the river in a treacherous armor of black ice.

It was a cold Tuesday morning when my phone rang with a call from Assistant U.S. Attorney Reynolds.

"Ethan," Reynolds’s gravelly voice came through the line. "Liam Vance’s defense team just submitted an emergency petition for a plea agreement. Under the terms, he’s pleading guilty to two counts of federal trade-secret theft and wire fraud. He’s looking at seven years at the Federal Correctional Institution in Oxford, Wisconsin."

Reynolds paused, clearing his throat.

"His lawyer said Liam has refused to sign the final proffer unless he gets fifteen minutes in a conference room with you. He claims he has something he needs to say. You don't have to go, Ethan. You don't owe that scumbag a single second of your life."

I looked out my office window at the snow swirling around the glass fifty floors above the street.

"Set it up, Reynolds," I said quietly. "I'll be there in thirty minutes."

The visitor’s room at the Metropolitan Correctional Center was an altar of institutional gray concrete, smelling of floor wax, carbolic soap, and unwashed despair.

I sat on a bolted-down aluminum chair on one side of a scratched plexiglass partition, wearing a heavy charcoal wool overcoat, my hands resting calmly in my lap.

The heavy steel security door buzzed and swung open with a harsh, mechanical clatter.

A federal corrections officer led Liam Vance into the room.

The transformation was horrific.

The bespoke Brioni suits, the thousand-dollar haircut, and the porcelain veneers were completely destroyed. Liam wore an ill-fitting, coarse orange jumpsuit with the letters BOP stamped across the shoulders. His hair had been roughly shorn down to an uneven buzz cut; his face was gaunt, hollowed out by three months of sleepless terror in solitary confinement; and deep, bruised circles ringed his bloodshot eyes.

His wrists and ankles were bound by heavy steel chains that clanked against the concrete with every agonizing step he took.

The guard guided him into the plastic chair across from me, clipped his chain to the floor eyelet, and stepped back to the door.

Liam didn't look up immediately. He stared down at his shackled, trembling hands, his breath coming in shallow, ragged rasps.

"You came," Liam whispered. His voice sounded like dry leaves scraping across a gravel driveway.

"I came, Liam," I said evenly.

Liam slowly lifted his head.

When his eyes met mine, there was no arrogance left. No patronizing mentorship. No vicious, mocking smirks. There was only the bottomless, agonizing comprehension of a man who had thrown his entire soul into a furnace for an empire he could never touch.

"Why, Ethan?" Liam wept, a single, greasy tear cutting a clean path through the gray grime on his hollow cheek. "Why didn't you just tell me you had watermarked the slides? If you had told me... if you had just warned me that morning in the breakroom... I would have stopped! I would have backed off! We could have shared the credit!"

I looked at him through the scratched glass.

I didn't feel hatred. I didn't feel rage. I felt only the cold, clinical pity one might afford a rabid dog that had finally broken its own teeth on an iron post.

"Shared the credit, Liam?" I asked softly, my voice carrying clearly through the perforated steel speaker grille.

Liam swallowed hard, his throat bobbing frantically. "Yes! We were friends, Ethan! I looked up to you! I made a mistake—a stupid, desperate mistake because I wanted to prove myself to Arthur—"

"In my first life, Liam," I interrupted, my voice dropping into that quiet, terrifying register that made his breath catch in his throat, "you didn't make a mistake. You took my slides. You took my promotion. You took my reputation. And then you spent twelve months systematically destroying my career until I was sleeping on a cot in an unheated room in Pilsen."

Liam froze. His mouth parted, his pupils dilating in sheer, superstitious horror. He stared at me as if he were looking at an apparition that had risen from an open grave.

"What... what are you talking about?" Liam stammered, pulling back against his chains, the metal rattling violently against the floor. "What first life?! That's... that's madness!"

"You thought I was weak because I was quiet, Liam," I whispered, leaning forward until my face was six inches from the plexiglass. "You thought because I didn't play your petty boardroom politics, I didn't know how to defend myself. But I knew exactly who you were from the second you walked into that breakroom."

I stood up slowly from my chair, buttoning my charcoal coat.

"You built your own cage, Liam," I said, looking down at the ruined wreck of the boy who had tried to steal my life. "You built it out of greed, lies, and stolen paper. Now you have seven years in Oxford to think about every single line."

I turned my back on him, knocking twice on the steel door for the guard.

"Ethan! Ethan, please! Don't leave me here!" Liam screamed, lunging forward against his chains, the steel links snapping tight, dragging his chest against the edge of the table as he sobbed hysterically into the cold, empty room. "Ethan! Please!"

The heavy steel door buzzed and swung open.