“Raise your hand if you think you’ve had a harder week than I’ve had,” he said, momentarily cutting through the tension by leading the group in a hearty laugh. Then his colleagues settled back into an expectant silence. Bezos was a master compartmentalizer; his ability to keep the intricate threads of his personal and professional lives separate was unrivaled. But now those threads had gotten tangled up. He needed to address the elephant in the room. “Just to set the record straight,” he started slowly, according to two people who heard the comments, “I did have a relationship with this woman.
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