“Call the warehouse supervisor,” I instructed, my voice cutting cleanly through the quiet hum of the air conditioning. “Tell him to come upstairs.”
Nina blinked. “Bill? The one who looked like he wanted to punch Martin this morning?”
“That’s the one,” I smiled, sliding the silver pen into my jacket pocket. “Tell him we need to talk about modernizing leadership—starting with someone who actually knows how to pack a truck.”
Part 5: The Ledger Closed
By Friday morning, the air in the building had changed. It smelled less like expensive cologne and bleached paper, and more like fresh coffee and old, reliable leather.
The board of directors had held a five-minute emergency vote via Zoom on Wednesday afternoon. There was no debate, no protracted negotiation, and no corporate PR statement about “pursuing other opportunities.” Martin Vale’s name had been scrubbed from the active directory so cleanly it was as though he had never existed—just a brief, unfortunate software glitch in an otherwise stable operating system.
