But his greatest mistake had happened long before he insulted her.
It had happened when he mentioned a document that was never supposed to exist.
And the woman standing beside him knew exactly where that document had come from.
Three months earlier, she had been sitting on the floor of her small apartment in Queens, surrounded by cardboard boxes, unpaid bills, and the remains of a professional life she had spent more than a decade building.
Her laptop rested on a low coffee table.
Beside it were two cold slices of pizza, a chipped ceramic mug, and a legal envelope that had arrived that afternoon.
The envelope contained a formal notice from her former employer.
It accused her of mishandling confidential information, violating internal procedures, and making unsupported allegations against an important corporate client.
The letter demanded that she return any company material she possessed and stop discussing the circumstances of her departure.
Near the bottom was a sentence that made her stomach tighten.
Further violations may result in immediate legal action.
She read the sentence three times.
Then she closed the letter, folded her hands, and stared at the wall.
Until recently, she had been a senior bilingual compliance analyst at a respected Manhattan consulting firm. She had graduated near the top of her university class, earned a graduate qualification in international business law, and spent two years studying and working in South Korea.
She could read complex Korean contracts, interpret formal business discussions, and identify differences between legal language that appeared identical to people relying on imperfect translations.
Her colleagues had once described her as indispensable.
Her supervisors had sent her into negotiations whenever the stakes became too high for ordinary translation software.
She had helped American companies navigate Korean regulatory requirements and advised Korean companies on American compliance obligations.
Her work had taken her from New York to Seoul, from San Francisco to Busan, and into conference rooms where a single misplaced sentence could change the meaning of a hundred-million-dollar agreement.
Yet now she was unemployed.
Her professional references had stopped answering.
Two recruiting agencies had withdrawn interviews without explanation.
And the consulting firm that had praised her judgment for years was suddenly portraying her as a dishonest employee.
She knew exactly when everything had started falling apart.
It began with a shipment of temperature-sensitive medical supplies.