You’re forty-three, Diane, and you still think anyone in this building respects you? Pack

What Marcus didn’t know was that the ‘Black designer’ whose work he’d stolen was Imani Brooks — my goddaughter, twenty-four, fresh out of Parsons, who’d sent me her portfolio three weeks earlier hoping for freelance advice. I’d forwarded exactly one mood board to Marcus as a reference, with her name watermarked on every single slide. He’d cropped the watermarks and pitched the concept to the board as his own original direction for the Nike collaboration bid. I walked to my car, drove four blocks to a coffee shop, and opened my laptop. Eleven years of receipts. Every email. Every Slack message. Every version-history timestamp on the shared drive showing Marcus pulling Imani’s files at 2:14 a.m. the night before his pitch. I sent one email — to Sloane Whitaker, Nike’s VP of Brand Partnerships, who I’d worked with on three previous launches. Subject line: ‘Before Friday’s pitch, you should see this.’ Attached: the original watermarked portfolio, the stolen deck, and the metadata trail. Sloane called me in nine minutes. By 4 p.m., Nike had pulled out of the bid entirely and requested a direct meeting with Imani. By 6 p.m., Pinnacle’s board chair, Eleanor Reyes, was calling my cell asking why their biggest potential client had just blacklisted them. I told her the truth, calmly, with screenshots. Marcus was escorted out the next morning by the same security guard who’d watched him fire me. The board offered me his job. I declined. Instead, I launched Holloway & Brooks Creative six weeks later — Imani as co-founder, full credit, equal equity. Our first client? Nike. Our second? Three of Pinnacle’s former accounts who followed me out the door. Last month Marcus messaged me on LinkedIn asking if we were hiring. I folded his message into thirds, screenshotted it, and slid it into a drawer. Some letters are worth keeping.