And because Doug Finney had suddenly urgently decided that his own skin was worth more than his loyalty to a sinking woman, by 6:00 that evening, the investigation had its first documented act of retaliation delivered voluntarily by the head of HR less than 9 hours after the investigation began. Victoria had done it again. She'd reached for a weapon and it had turned into evidence in her hand. That was the pattern now. She just couldn't see it because a person drowning cannot study the water across town at 6:30.
Nathan Carter's phone rang and it was Daniel Brooks and Nathan let it go to the second ring before he picked up because he wanted to hear how the man opened. Mr. Carter, this is Dan Brooks over at Pioneer. You're Mr. Webb tells me you're the fellow who sent a spy into my building last week. Nathan smiled. I prefer analyst.
Analyst spy, whatever you call it. The kid was polite, so I'll let it slide. Brooks's voice was warm, gravelly, unpretentious. The voice of a man who'd never learned to be anyone but himself. Now, your people came to me with a term sheet that has more money in it than I've seen in my whole life.
And it comes with a condition. I've got some questions about this anti-discrimination framework thing. Transparent scoring, publishing our criteria. I want to understand what I'm signing up for before I sign up for it. Ask your questions.
Straight one. Then is this real or is this window dressing because I've been offered money before by people who wanted me to hang a nice sign in the lobby and change nothing behind it. If that's what this is, I'm not interested, no matter the number. Nathan sat down the dish he'd been drying. Emma was in the next room and he lowered his voice.
Mr. Brooks, two days ago, I walked into a company we were about to give $180 million, and I put my hand out to shake, and the CEO looked at my suit and decided I wasn't worth the courtesy of a handshake in front of her board. He heard Brooks go quiet on the other end. I've spent my whole life being that man in the plain suit, and I decided standing in that parking lot that I was done being quiet about it. So, no, Mr. Brooks, it's not window dressing. It's the whole point.
I don't want you to hang a sign. I want you to build a company where the next man in a plain suit gets his hand shaken before anybody knows what he's worth. And I want the rules written down where he can read them so he never has to wonder. There was a long silence on the line. My father, Brooks finally said, was a janitor, cleaned office buildings at night for 31 years, and I used to help him sometimes on weekends when I was a kid.
And I watched the way the day people talked to my dad, or rather the way they didn't talk to him. The way they looked right through him like he was part of the furniture. I swore I'd never looked through a person like that. Built my whole company on it. His voice thickened.
Mr. Carter, I don't need to think about your condition. Your condition is the reason I built this place. I'll sign it tonight. Then we have a deal, Nathan said. And Mr. Brooks, one more thing.
Name it. When we announce, I don't want it to be about them. I don't ever want to say Summit's name. I don't want a single word that could look like revenge. I just want us to stand next to what we built and let people compare.
Can you live with that? Mr. Carter, Brooks said, I've been standing next to what I built and letting people compare for 30 years. That's the only marketing I've ever known how to do. They hung up and Nathan stood in his kitchen for a moment and then Emma called from the other room. Daddy, who was that?
And Nathan said, that was a man who shakes hands, sweetheart. And Emma said, Everybody shakes hands. And Nathan said, No, baby, not everybody, but the good ones do. 2 Days later, the funding round collapsed completely. It happened fast, the way these things always do.
At the end, the slow leak became a rupture in a single afternoon. The third co-investor pulled at 11:00 a.m. By noon, it was on every wire. By 1:00, a downgrade watch had been issued on Summit's credit. By 2, the stock had shed 19% from where it had opened 3 days before, and the trading was heavy. And the analysts who'd been quiet were suddenly not quiet at all.
And the phrase that kept appearing over and over in every note and every segment was the phrase that would follow Victoria Hayes for the rest of her professional life. Governance concerns. Nobody knew the specifics. The investigation was airtight and Coleman had run it clean and not one document had leaked. But the market didn't need the specifics.
The market only needed the shape of the thing. A legendary investor walking away without explanation. A company suddenly unable to say why. A special committee, a stock in free fall, and the market filled in the shape with the worst thing it could imagine, which was, as it happened, roughly the truth. Victoria watched 22 years of work lose a fifth of its value in 6 hours, and she did the only thing left in her broken playbook.
She called a mandatory all-hands meeting. She was going to give a speech. She was going to rally the troops. She was going to stand in front of the whole company and remind them who they were and where they were going. The way she'd done a hundred times before.