I want to tell you who I was before this started. I was twenty-six years old. I had been a marketing analyst at a mid-sized consulting firm in Atlanta for fourteen months. I loved my job. I was good at my job. I had been hired by Anthony's boss, not by Anthony himself — Anthony had inherited me when the senior VP I originally reported to got promoted out to Chicago. I met Anthony for the first time on a Tuesday in April, in a conference room full of fifteen other people, and within three weeks of him becoming my direct supervisor, he had started asking me to stay late for "quick alignment meetings" that my four male peers were not invited to.

He had started bringing me coffee from the cafe across the street — specifically, oat milk lattes with two pumps of vanilla, which was not a drink I had ever ordered in front of him but which was a drink I had ordered from that cafe for the fourteen months I had worked at the firm. He had, I realized later, been watching me for those fourteen months. I just didn't know it yet.