The moment I saw the HR rep’s tight smile and darting eyes, I knew what was coming. She led me into one of those sterile conference rooms they use to make you feel small. Gray walls, buzzing lights, a table that could double as a morgue slab. On the other side sat the new CTO, legs crossed, looking like he’d just won something.
He didn’t even try to hide the smirk. Nineteen years I’d given this place. Late nights, missed holidays, patching up disasters he couldn’t even spell. And this is how it ends.
No handshake, no “we’ll miss you. ” Just a folder slid across the table and HR’s monotone: “We’ll need your badge, your laptop, and the company mug. ”
The mug. A ceramic thing with the faded logo from the early days, back when our office was a rented basement with a leaky ceiling and one working space heater.
They treated it like I’d been hiding crown jewels in my desk. I stared at it for a moment, seeing my own face warped in the reflection on the glossy black table. Then I handed it over, slow and deliberate. The CTO’s smirk deepened, like taking my mug was some symbolic victory.
I bit down on the laugh bubbling in my chest. If only he knew. They thought stripping me of a ceramic mug was going to be the highlight of their petty power trip. What they didn’t notice, what they’d never bothered to remember, was the tiny set of keys I still held.
Not physical keys. Digital ones. The kind you can’t yank out of someone’s hands in a fluorescent-lit room. I kept my face blank, my posture small, the perfect picture of someone being quietly escorted out.
The CTO leaned back in his chair, already talking over me to HR about rebuilding “her baby” in a week. My baby. When he couldn’t even log into the system without a sticky note full of passwords. I gathered my things in silence.
No scene, no tears, no bitter speeches for the peanut gallery of curious co-workers pretending to refill their water bottles in the hallway. The mug, the laptop, the badge went into HR’s little cardboard box like trophies from a game they thought they’d won. But there was one thing that didn’t leave with them. The knowledge that the beating heart of their entire operation—the client portal that 50,000 customers relied on every single day—was living on a domain that didn’t belong to them.
Back in the scrappy startup days, when budgets were tighter than a rusted jar lid, the founders had begged me to get the portal running by Monday. We had no legal team, no procurement department, just me, a few credit cards, and a caffeine habit. I’d registered the domain in my own name, renewed it every year, kept the receipts. At first, I kept waiting for someone to ask about transferring ownership.
No one ever did. Over time, it just became another invisible thread I carried for them—when they didn’t even remember it existed. Walking out that day, my co-workers’ eyes followed me like they were watching a funeral procession. I kept my steps steady, my expression neutral, even when the security guard—poor guy, looked more embarrassed than I did—followed me to the front door.
Outside, the winter air hit me sharp in the lungs. I pulled my coat tighter, slid my hands into my pockets, and felt the business card there. My lawyer’s card. I’d kept it for years, mostly for wills and tax questions.
Funny how life rearranges your priorities. The CTO’s voice still echoed in my head as I walked to my car. “We’ll have it rebuilt in a week. ” He said it like replacing nearly two decades of infrastructure was as easy as ordering a new printer.
He didn’t know yet. But they would, soon. As I pulled out of the the parking lot, I glanced back once—not at the building, but at the the people inside it. I wondered how long it would take before someone noticed that the thing they thought they owned was, in fact, mine.
Not hours. Not days. By tomorrow morning, the cracks would show. And by the end of the week, those cracks would be sinkholes.
For now, though, I drove home. I set my bag down on the kitchen counter, made myself a strong cup of coffee, and thought about the mug they’d made such a fuss over. They could keep it. I had something better—something worth far more than ceramic.
Something that could bring their shiny new CTO to his knees without me ever setting foot in that building again. The countdown had started. They just didn’t know it yet. The drive home felt longer than usual, but my mind wasn’t in the present anyway.
It was back in the cramped, stale-smelling basement where this whole thing had started. No ergonomic chairs, no standing desks, no espresso machine hissing in the corner. Just a mismatched set of folding tables, a dozen beat-up laptops, and a handful of us trying to make a company out of nothing but caffeine and stubbornness. I could still hear the founder’s voice from that night.
2:00 in the the morning, rain hammering against the one basement window, him pacing with a phone clamped to to his ear. “You need the client portal up by Monday,” he said, shooting me a look like I could bend time. “No, we can’t hire an agency. No, we can’t wait.
Just figure it out. ”
When he hung up, the room was quiet except for the sound of our one overworked server wheezing in the corner. The truth was, we didn’t have a budget for extras like domain registrations or security certificates. We were broke.
Not watching-the-pennies broke. Broke as in someone bringing peanut butter sandwiches because it’’s all we’ve got for lunch. So I pulled out my personal credit card and bought the domain myself. $59.
99 for a one-year registration. It was a small thing at the time, a quick fix to get us moving. We needed a front door for clients to log in, and I gave us one. Nobody said, “Thanks for fronting the cost, Clara.
” Nobody promised to pay me back. I didn’t ask. I just kept renewing it every year when the reminder email came. For a while, I’d forward the receipt to the founder.
He’d always respond with a thumbs-up emmoji or a “got it. ” After a few years, he stopped replying, and eventually I stopped sending them. The renewal fee went on autopilot with my personal card, and no one in management gave it a second thought. Funny thing about small details—they’re invisible until they’re not.
Until they’’re the only thing standing between your business and total collapse. It wasn’t just the domain, either. In those early days, I’d stitched together the entire framework that ran their client operations. Password resets, billing notifications, order tracking—all of it was routed through that portal.
Without the domain, it wasn’t just a matter of switching it over. You’d have to rebuild the whole backbone from scratch and convince 50,000 clients to update their bookmarks, trust the new site, and hope nothing broke in the process. Good luck with that in a week. Let alone overnight.
I’d never mentioned it out loud. Never used it as leverage before. Why would I? Back then, I was part of the family.
We were all in the trenches together, breathing the same dusty air and pulling the same ridiculous hours. You don’t weaponize the trust you build with people you believe in. But now, that family had voted me off the island because the new CTO wanted to mark his territory. The memory of his smug grin this morning replayed in in my head.
That little flicker of satisfaction he got when I handed over the mug. He thought that was a win. In his mind, the mug was symbolic of ownership—his ownership over everything I’d built. I knew better.
Ownership wasn’t about holding a mug in your hands. It was about control. And that control was still sitting quietly in my registrar account, registered in my name, tied to my credit card. All it would take was one login, a few keystrokes, and the locks on their front door would change.
I’d kept it up for 19 years not because I needed the upper hand, but because the company had never cared enough to handle it themselves. And now that they’d shown me exactly how much—or rather, how little—I mattered to them, I was starting to think maybe it was time they learned just how much that small detail mattered to them. It was almost poetic. The same thing I’d done to protect the company in its infancy was now the one thing that could strangle it in its prime.
All I had to do was decide when to pull the trigger. That decision wouldn’t be made in anger. Anger burns too hot, too fast. No, this would be deliberate, slow, like watching a storm build from a distance, knowing you’re the one holding the switch that will send the lightning exactly where you want it to strike.
They thought they’d taken everything from me today. They didn’t even realize I’d walked out with the one thing they couldn’t buy back on their terms. And soon, very soon, they’d learn that forgetting about the past has consequences. Especially when the past has been quietly waiting for its moment to remind you it’s still here.
I moved through my office like I was cataloging a life in reverse. Each drawer, each shelf quietly stripped of anything that was mine and only mine. No slamming, no dramatic gestures, no cardboard box held like a flag of defeat. If they wanted a scene, they weren’t going to get one.
A few co-workers—the ones who’d been there in the old days—hovered near my doorway under the pretense of checking their phones. One leaned in and murmured, “You should say something. Make them regret it. ”
I gave a small smile, the kind that says I’ve already got that covered, and shook my head.
Words in this place didn’t carry weight. Not anymore. Actions would. From somewhere behind me, through the thin walls of HR’s fishbowl office, I caught the CTO’s voice, loud, performative, like he was still auditioning for the role of leader.
“We’ll rebuild her baby in a week,” he was saying, as if the last 19 years could be crammed into a seven-day project sprint. HR laughed politely, that brittle, hollow sound people make when they’re trying to please the person who signs their paycheck. I placed my remaining personal items—photos, pens, the small cactus I’d somehow kept alive—into my tote bag. Everything else, they could keep.
The files, the processes, the neat stacks of Post-its with notes only I understood. I didn’t realize how much of what I’d built was in my head, and how little of it was written down in a way they could use. No farewell email. No mass message filled with platitudes about new adventures.
No cryptic post on social media hinting at exciting opportunities ahead. My silence would be louder than any carefully crafted goodbye. I slung the bag over my shoulder and felt the faint rectangular edge of something in the bottom pocket. My fingers found it easily—my lawyer’s business card.
Heavy cardstock, clean lettering, no unnecessary design flourishes. I’d had it for years, mostly for tax questions or the occasional policy update. Now it was going to serve a different purpose. The security guard assigned to escort me didn’t say much, just walked a polite half-step behind me.
At the elevator, I pressed the button and stood still, watching the mirrored doors reflect a version of me they wouldn’t recognize a week from now. Calm. Collected. Almost serene.
Not because I was at peace, but because I knew something they didn’t. The clock was already ticking. When the doors opened on the ground floor, I stepped out into the lobby without looking back. Outside, the winter air was sharp and bracing, smelling faintly of exhaust and coffee from the shop down the block.
I started toward the parking garage, footsteps echoing in the cold, thinking about the CTO’s joke. “Her baby. ” He thought he’d inherited it. He thought it was his now to rebuild or tear apart as he pleased.
What he didn’t realize was that some things can’t be inherited without permission. And permission wasn’t something I was planning to give. I reached my car, slid into the driver’s seat, and started the engine. Heat groaned to life, washing over my frozen hands.
My phone buzzed with a text from a friend in another department: “Are you okay? ” I stared at the screen for a moment, then slipped the phone into my coat pocket without answering. There’d be time for explanations later. After the storm.
As I pulled out into traffic, I felt the tension drain from my shoulders, replaced by something steadier, colder. It wasn’t anger. Not anymore. It was anticipation.
The kind of quiet patience you have when you know you’ve already won, and the other side hasn’t realized they’ve lost yet. They thought my exit was the end of the story. But walking out that door today was just the beginning. By 8:00 the next morning, the fuse I’d lit without striking a match burned clean through.
Somewhere in the company’s gleaming glass tower, a switch was flipped, a server was pinged, and 50,000 clients—from insurance firms in Boston to manufacturing plants in Kansas—hit “log in” like they had every morning for years. Only this time, instead of dashboards and data, they got a white screen with black text. Simple and unapologetic: “License to use this domain expired upon termination of my employment. Please contact my lawyer to negotiate new terms.
”
That was it. No colors, no logos, no animations to soften the blow. Just the words and my lawyer’s direct line. I sat at my kitchen table, mug of coffee in hand—not the company mug, my mug—and watched the world burn from the comfort of my worn flannel robe.
Outside, the street was quiet. Inside, my phone pulsed every few seconds with fresh alerts. Customer service wait times climbing past 40 minutes. Client representatives openly tweeting about mysterious downtime.
Panicked LinkedIn posts from mid-level managers asking if anyone else was having trouble accessing the system. In my mind, I could already picture the escalation. First, a low hum of confusion. Maybe the server’s just down for maintenance.
Give it a few minutes. Then the calls start trickling in from the early risers who run on tight schedules. Within 10 minutes, that trickle becomes a flood. The customer service reps—most of whom I’d trained personally—juggling three headsets at once, apologizing over and over without any actual answers.
By the half-hour mark, the problem would move up the food chain. Team leads pulling IT into urgent huddles. IT pinging each other in frantic Slack messages. And when they realized it wasn’t a glitch, wasn’t a firewall issue, wasn’t a server crash—when they finally saw the message for themselves—the panic would harden into something heavier.
I took a slow sip of coffee, letting the warmth spread across my tongue. Funny thing was, I didn’t feel giddy. There was no manic rush, no petty satisfaction. Just a calm, steady hum of control.
They’d fired me thinking they’d stripped me of my value. Today, they’d learn just how wrong they were. And they’d learn it while explaining to every client why their business had ground to a halt. Somewhere around 8:15, a breaking-news alert popped onto my screen: “Regional tech services firm experiences massive client outage.
Cause unknown. ” I chuckled under my breath. The “cause unknown” part wouldn’t last long. All it would take was one client with an eye for detail to read the message and realize the outage wasn’t just technical—it was contractual.
By 8:30, the ripple effect had likely hit the CEO’s office. He’d start with IT, who’d tell him the servers were fine, but the domain itself was the problem. Then legal, who’d pull up the registration info and find my name—not the company’s—in bold letters. At that point, I imagined the silence in the room would be thick enough to cut with a knife.
On my end, I refreshed the news feed, set my phone face down, and went to rinse out my mug. I’d waited 19 years for this company to notice the thread holding everything together. They never did. Now the thread was gone, and they were discovering what it had been holding up.
The kitchen clock ticked softly behind me. Every second it counted off was another second of frozen accounts, halted transactions, and angry clients. The stakes weren’t just high—they were climbing by the minute. And I hadn’t even had to leave my house to raise them.
By 9:02, my phone lit up with a number I recognized instantly—the CEO’s direct line. I let it ring twice, just long enough to make him wonder if I’d pick up, then answered with the kind of neutral tone you use when talking to a polite stranger. “Clara,” he said, his voice dipped in syrup so thick I could hear it clogging his teeth. “How are you doing this morning?
I wanted to touch base, make sure there aren’t any misunderstandings. ”
I could practically hear the frantic shuffle of papers on his desk, the muffled voices in the background feeding him lines. He launched into a rehearsed offer—a small payment for my trouble if I’d be willing to get the portal back up today. He said it like he was doing me a favor.
Like I might not realize the leverage in my hands. “I think you should call my lawyer,” I said evenly. “Oh, that’s not necessary. ”
“It is,” I cut in.
“Have a good day. ”
And I hung up before he could try another spoonful of sugar. I pictured him staring at the phone, blinking, then spinning around in his leather chair to bark orders at whoever was unlucky enough to be standing closest. Probably the CTO, who I imagined was already vibrating with fury.
In some corner of the building, he would have been storming into IT by now, slamming his hand on a desk and demanding, “Just switch the domain. Point the site somewhere else. ”
I knew exactly how that conversation would go because I’d had it myself years ago. We’d acquired a smaller client and had to migrate their platform to ours.
IT would explain, in careful, reluctant voices, that switching domains wasn’t like flipping a light switch. It meant moving terabytes of client data, reconfiguring security protocols, rewriting login scripts, and then testing it all before unleashing it on 50,000 paying customers. Even if they started immediately, it would take weeks. And that was if nothing went wrong.
Something always went wrong. So they’d try the other route—bypass me, find a way to crack into the registrar account. But that account wasn’t tied to any company email or payment method. It was mine.
Secured. Locked down. Two-factor authenticated with a device only I held. And even if they somehow hacked it, the legal minefield they’d step into would make the current outage look like a coffee spill.
I sat back in my chair, curling my hands around my coffee mug, letting the steam warm my face. There was amusement in watching it all unfold. The same arrogance that had gotten them here was now keeping them from seeing the obvious. They couldn’t bully me, and they couldn’t work around me.
The CTO had walked me out yesterday like I was a replaceable part. Now he was learning I wasn’t a part at all. I was the blueprint. Without me, they weren’t just missing a cog in the machine.
They were missing the entire gear that turned it. Somewhere between the CEO’s fake warmth and the CTO’s red-faced demands, they’d realized the same thing. This wasn’t a technical problem they could patch. It wasn’t a disgruntled ex-employee they could intimidate.
It was a lock. And I was the only one with the key. And the clock was still ticking. By noon, the gloves came off.
My inbox pinged with an email so stuffed with legalese it could have doubled as ballast for a sinking ship. Subject line: “Cease and Desist—Unauthorized Control of Company Property. ” The body was exactly what I expected. Pages of bluster from their corporate law firm, dripping with words like “malicious,” “hostage,” and “damages in excess.
” They accused me of interfering with company operations, with critical infrastructure, and deliberately causing reputational harm. It read less like a legal letter and more like a tantrum put through a thesaurus. I didn’t reply. I didn’t have to.
Instead, I forwarded it to my lawyer with a two-word note: “Your move. ”
An hour later, his response went out. It was one page. One PDF.
No threats, no emotion, just the facts. Page one: the original domain registration invoice from 19 years ago, billed to my personal address, paid with my personal credit card. Page two: the current registration details. My name listed as both owner and administrative contact.
Page three: a tidy column of renewal receipts year after year, each one charged to me. That was it. Three pages that said more than their 10-page threat ever could. I imagined the moment their legal team opened it—the silence in the conference room, the uncomfortable cough from the junior associate who spotted the problem first.
There’s no legal angle to spin when the paper trail is that clean. The domain wasn’t theirs. It had never been theirs. And without it, everything they built was a castle sitting on someone else’s land.
By the time the PDF landed in their inbox, the power dynamic had shifted completely. This was no longer a rogue IT employee causing trouble. This was a property dispute with clear ownership. And the owner wasn’t budging.
That’s the beauty of facts. They don’t care about rank or titles or corner offices. They don’t bend to charm or threats. Facts just sit there, immutable, like a locked door no amount of kicking will open without the right key.
Quiet vindication settled over me like a warm blanket. I didn’t need to raise my voice. I didn’t need to posture or gloat. The documents spoke for themselves, and they spoke in a language even the most arrogant CTO or puffed-up CEO couldn’t ignore.
This belongs to her. I poured myself another cup of coffee, scrolling past yet another news alert about ongoing service disruptions at the company. The calls from clients must have been relentless by now—angry, impatient, demanding answers. And every time they tried to explain, the conversation would circle back to the same problem.
The thing they needed was mine. Legally and completely. This wasn’t a tech issue anymore. It was a legal chokehold.
And the more they struggled, the tighter it was going to get. By mid-afternoon, the story slipped out of their control. It always does. You can corral internal chaos for a while, but once it spills into the public eye, you’re done.
At 2:17 p. m. , one of the tech blogs I’d read for years—known for its love of juicy industry gossip—posted an article with the headline “Major SaaS provider locks out 50,000 clients over employment dispute. ” The question mark was cute, like they were pretending they didn’t already know exactly what was happening.
The lead image was a full screenshot of the login page message. My message. In crisp resolution. No blurring, no speculation, just the words in black and white.
Within minutes, the piece was shared on Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit. Comments rolled in like a tide. “This is what happens when you treat your people like trash. ” “50,000 clients?
That’s a PR bloodbath waiting to happen. ” “Bet the CEO’s having a fun afternoon. ”
I imagined the company’s internal Slack channels melting under the weight of frantic messages from their PR department. A crisis meeting would be called.
The CEO would try to steer the conversation. The CTO would posture. Legal would hiss about pending negotiations. And PR would say what they were all thinking: “We’re getting crucified out there.
”
Then came the tweets from clients. These weren’t vague “anyone else having issues? ” posts. These were angry, direct callouts tagging the company’s official account and—crucially—tagging major news outlets in the same breath.
“@companyname, you just cost us a day’s revenue. Should we send the bill to your CEO or your CTO? ” “@WSJTech, @BloombergTech—@companyname locked us out of our portal with zero warning. Our clients are calling non-stop.
Explain yourselves. ”
Once that genie’s out of the bottle, there’s no putting it back. Newsdesks sniff blood when they see big numbers and bigger egos. And nothing says “press this story” like a high-profile service outage with a personal vendetta at the center.
I refreshed the blog’s comment section between sips of coffee. The speculation was delicious. Some thought it was a hacker. Others guessed a whistleblower.
A few sharp-eyed readers pointed out the domain ownership angle almost immediately. One even pulled the public WHOIS record. There it was—my name, clear as day. That one got screenshotted and circulated faster than the company could draft their “We take this matter seriously” statement.
The thrill wasn’t in the chaos itself. It was in the precision of it. I hadn’t touched their systems. I hadn’t broken a single law.
All I’d done was remind them that their empire sat on ground they didn’t own. And now the world knew it, too. By 3:00 p. m.
, I knew the leadership team wasn’t just fighting to restore service anymore. They were fighting to survive the story. Once the narrative hardens—“CEO loses control of company’s critical infrastructure to ex-employee”—you can’t undo it. It sticks.
It becomes the thing investors bring up in board meetings for years. It becomes the headline in your obituary. And as the PR nightmare grew teeth, I just leaned back in my chair, the hum of the refrigerator my only soundtrack, and thought, “Now it’s not about fixing it. It’s about how far they’ll fall before they admit I’m the one who can stop it.
”
The call came at 6:42 p. m. , long after I figured they’d retreat into their war rooms for the night. The number was blocked, but the voice on the other end was unmistakable—measured, precise, the kind of tone you only get from someone who spent decades talking to shareholders without ever raising their voice.
“Clara,” the board chair said. Not a question. Not a pleasantry. Just my name, weighted with something the CEO and CTO had been incapable of all day.
Respect. “I’m calling on behalf of the board. We’d like to discuss terms. Not threats.
Not condescension. Terms. ”
I let a beat of silence stretch between us, just long enough for them to feel the imbalance. “I’m listening,” I said finally.
“We’d like to restore service as soon as possible,” they continued, skirting around the word “desperately. ” “If you’ll outline what you need in order to stop. ”
My voice was steady, low. “This isn’t about a payout.
This is about making things right. ”
Another pause. Chairs creaked faintly on their end—the subtle shuffle of people leaning in closer to a speakerphone. “First,” I said, “you’re going to reinstate three employees you terminated without cause in the past year.
Full back pay. No probation periods. They were good at their jobs, and you tossed them aside because they didn’t fit someone’s ego. ”
I could hear a faint intake of breath on the other end, but no one interrupted.
“Second, you will issue a public statement. Not a vague corporate apology—a statement naming those three employees, detailing their contributions to the company, and acknowledging the damage done by removing them. ”
The board chair hesitated for just a fraction of a second. I pressed on.
“And third,” I said, letting each word land like a hammer, “the CTO resigns. Publicly. Effective immediately. No golden parachute.
No consulting contract in disguise. He leaves with nothing but a smirk. ”
The silence that followed was exquisite. Not the stunned kind you get when someone hears bad news.
This was the silence of calculation, when every person in the room is weighing their pride against their survival. “I understand those are strong demands,” the chair said eventually, their voice a touch tighter now. “They’re fair,” I said. “And they’re final.
If you agree, I’ll approve the domain renewal and have the portal live within the hour. If not—” I let the sentence trail off. I didn’t need to finish it. They already knew the alternative.
Another day of outages. Another day of headlines. Another day of investors losing faith. On my end, I was perfectly still, savoring the quiet, unshakable in the knowledge that they’d boxed themselves into this corner the moment they decided I was disposable.
They could choose their pride, or they could choose the company. They didn’t have the luxury of both. At 9:03 the next morning, the company’s official social media accounts went dark for a full minute. No replies, no deflections, no vague “we’re working on it” updates.
Then, in one coordinated blast, the statement dropped everywhere. Website. Twitter. LinkedIn.
Press release. It was short, sharp, and—most importantly—exactly what I demanded. Three names spelled correctly, reinstated effective immediately with full back pay. A paragraph outlining each of their contributions over the years, the kind of praise you couldn’t buy with any marketing budget.
An admission, clear as day, that their termination had been a mistake. And there, in the final block of text, a scanned PDF of the CTO’s resignation letter. It wasn’t flowery. It wasn’t even long.
Just three clipped paragraphs and his jagged signature at the bottom. But the tone—oh, the tone was everything. You could feel the teeth marks in every sentence, the humiliation wrapped in corporate politeness. No title.
No future consulting role. No promises of continuing to support the company from afar. Just gone. I sat in my home office, my own mug warm between my hands—the same one HR had made such a show of taking from me, replaced with the better one I’d bought myself years ago—and watched the feeds light up in real time.
Clients reposted the statement with captions like “about time. ” Industry bloggers quoted the resignation letter word for word. One popular tech commentator simply tweeted, “And that’s how you do it,” alongside a screenshot of my original portal message. At 9:08, I logged into my registrar account.
The domain sat there, steady and unbothered, waiting for me to make the final move. I clicked “approve” on the license renewal. By 9:10, the login portal was back online. 50,000 clients could once again get to their dashboards, check their data, run their businesses.
The outage was over, but the story was only getting bigger. News outlets pounced on the chain of events. “Longtime employee fired, company loses access to portal, CTO resigns in public defeat. ” The phrasing varied, but the narrative was locked.
The humiliation wasn’t just corporate—it was personal. Stamped with the CTO’s name for everyone to see. I didn’t post anything. Didn’t grant interviews.
Didn’t gloat. I just closed my laptop, took a slow sip of coffee, and let the world connect the dots. Quiet winds are the sharpest ones. They cut deepest.
Leave the longest scars. By lunchtime, the hashtags were trending. By dinner, my phone was buzzing with friends sending screenshots from every corner of the internet. And somewhere in that glass tower, the CEO was learning the final truth.
Firing me had cost them far more than keeping me ever would have. The portal was theirs again. The victory was mine.
