“The ceo’s son-in-law quietly fired me at 9:14 am after 19 years, so i walked out with a cardboard box and smiled—because he never thought to ask my maiden name: clara tennant… I was quietly fired at 9:14 a.m. by the CEO’s son-in-law.

Martin stared at her, his bloodshot eyes wide. “What are they owned by?”

“A private holding entity called CT Holdings LLC,” Sarah swallowed hard. “We’ve been paying them a monthly lease of four hundred thousand dollars for the last twelve years. I called the registry to check who the principal shareholder of CT Holdings is…”

“And?”

“It’s Clara,” Sarah breathed. “She bought the land during the 2008 crash with her personal inheritance to keep the company from going under during the liquidity crunch. We’ve been renting our own loading docks from her for over a decade at a below-market rate because she didn’t want the board to panic.”

Martin slowly lowered himself into his leather chair. The color drained entirely from his face, leaving him looking like a freshly exhumed corpse in an expensive Italian suit.