Because I've been asking myself that question for 6 weeks, she said. Who knew? When they knew whether the people around me were telling me the truth or telling me what they thought I wanted to hear. And and I think you told me the truth last night, she said, which is interesting because in 3 years, you've only been in the same room as me for maybe 40 hours total, and you're apparently better informed about what's happening in my company than half the people who report directly to me. Marcus thought about that.
That's not a compliment, he said. That's an indictment of your information flow. She smiled slowly, the same surprised at herself smile from the rooftop. Yes, she said it is. He should have left then.
He should have thanked her for the coffee and the room and the water and the ibuprofen he had needed. And he should have picked up his jacket and called a car and gone home to his daughter and his normal life and his careful rules and the safe groove of being Marcus Carter, senior operations manager. Level seven, employee ID H241. He didn't. He picked up the coffee again and said, "The reason nobody sends the bad news upstairs isn't because they don't know." She waited.
It's because the last person who did got moved to a lateral role in 4 months and took a salary freeze. People notice things like that. They tell each other. It becomes the story of what happens when you say the wrong thing and then you stop hearing the right things. Amelia didn't respond immediately.
She set down her mug. She uncrossed her legs. She looked at him with an expression he didn't have a name for. Not the CEO look, not the boardroom look. Something more unguarded than either of those.
Who got moved to the lateral role? She asked quietly. Dana Reyes. Systems integration. About a year and a half ago, she flagged a compliance issue in the Meridian contract before it became a problem.
By the time the contract was renegotiated, she was managing a team of two in a satellite office. Dana was moved because of a restructure. Dana was moved 6 weeks after she put something uncomfortable in writing. Marcus said, "I'm not saying it was intentional. I'm saying it doesn't matter whether it was intentional.
What matters is the story it told." Silence after that was different from the silence before it. Amelia stood up, walked to the window, stood with her back to him for a moment, and Marcus watched her in profile the straight line of her shoulders. The slight tension in her jaw, the way she held herself like a woman who had spent so long being the strongest person in the room that she'd forgotten how to stand any other way. "Do you know what the hardest part of this job is?" she said without turning around. He didn't answer.
He knew she didn't need him to. It's not the decisions, she said. I'm good at decisions. It's not the pressure or the board or the quarterly numbers. I've handled all of that since I was 27 years old and I can keep handling it.