“Find her!” Martin roared at the phone, his voice cracking with the frantic pitch of a man realizing too late that he had jumped out of an airplane without a parachute. “Call her cell! Offer her a bonus! Offer her a corner office on the tenth floor! Just get Clara Tennant back in this building before the wire transfers fail at midday!”
“Mr. Vale,” the voice of Heinrich Bauer, the senior European board member, crackled through the speaker with glacial Swiss coldness. “We do not simply ‘get’ a Tennant back. You were explicitly warned during your onboarding orientation to consult the family council before making sweeping structural changes to core personnel. You assured us you had audited every department.”
“She was just a controller!” Martin shrieked, gesturing wildly at the empty air. “An old lady with a calculator and a mug! How was I supposed to know she’s Arthur Tennant’s granddaughter? The name on her badge said Vance!”
