Victoria Sinclair's face went white. Not pale, white. The color drained from her cheeks the way water drains from a cracked vase. Fast, irreversible, impossible to hide. Her lips parted.
No sound came out. Her hand, the one holding the champagne, began to tremble. The glass shook once, twice. A single drop of dome perinol, fell onto the white tablecloth and spread into a circle the size of a coin. Bradley Whitmore's grin collapsed.
His jaw went slack. His eyes darted from the screen to Malcolm's empty chair to the stage and back again, searching for an explanation that would make this not real. He found none. Pamela Ashworth pressed both hands flat on the table as if the room had tilted. Garrett Cole stood near the service entrance, his tablet hanging at his side.
His face was the color of wet cement. The words executive transition team echoed in his skull like a bell that would not stop ringing. Malcolm pushed back his chair. He stood. He buttoned the single button of his charcoal suit.
The cheap suit as Victoria had called it. He walked across the ballroom floor for the fourth and final time that evening. Every eye followed him. Every head turned. The security guards, the same men who had been told to watch him, track him, keep eyes on the person of interest, stepped aside.
Raymond Pratt straightened his posture and gave a small, almost imperceptible nod as Malcolm passed. Malcolm climbed the three steps to the stage. He shook Douglas Reed's hand, the first handshake of the evening that was returned. Douglas stepped aside. Malcolm stood at the podium.
He looked out over the room. He found Victoria's face in the crowd. She was staring at him with an expression that contained every emotion a human face can hold at once. Shock, shame, terror, disbelief, and the sudden, nauseating realization that she had spent the entire evening humiliating her own boss. Malcolm did not mention the insults.
He did not reference the three rejected handshakes. He did not quote her words back to her. He did not need to. Everyone in the room remembered. Everyone in the room was already replaying the evening in their minds, rewriting their own roles, wondering how much they had laughed, how loudly they had agreed, how visible their cruelty had been.
"Good evening," Malcolm said. His voice was calm, the same calm he had carried all night. "I'm Malcolm Hayes. I'm the new chairman of your parent company, and I want to start by saying, I've learned a great deal about this organization tonight, more than any quarterly report could ever tell me." He paused.
The room held its breath. "I've seen how this company treats people it doesn't recognize. I've seen how it treats people it considers beneath its standards. And I can tell you this, things are going to change starting tonight." He did not raise his voice.