So, no, the old me wouldn't have looked twice at you, but the old me almost destroyed everything she built. And I would very much like to not be the old me anymore. I think you might be one of the few people who could help me not be. " Marcus was quiet for a long time. It was the honesty that reached him. It always was with her.
She could have lied, and he'd have known, and he'd have said no, and shown her the door. Instead, she told him the ugly truth about herself unprompted at her own expense, and that was the one thing Marcus Bennett had never been able to walk away from in his whole life. A person telling the hard truth when the easy lie was right there. "I have conditions," he said. Evelyn leaned forward.
"Name them. " "First, I'm home by 6:00 every night, and I'm at that school at 3:00 every afternoon, and that is not negotiable. Not for a test flight, not for the government, not for a billion-dollar contract. My daughter comes first, always. If the job can't live with that, then I can't take the job. " "Done. Easily done.
Second, the safety of every pilot who flies for this company is my call and my call alone. If I say an aircraft doesn't fly, it doesn't fly, and no executive, no investor, and no CEO overrides me, ever. Because the whole reason I'm sitting here is that this company almost killed a man by overriding the people who knew better. That ends with me. If I take this job, that never happens again. " "Done.
Third, Marcus's voice changed slightly. Daniel Okafor, that young man is the best thing in your entire engineering department, and he proved it when it counted. His new team works with mine closely, and he answers to no one who might ever be tempted to bury his analysis again. He's protected, permanently. " "I already promoted him this morning," Evelyn said. "Head of structural safety review reporting directly to me.
And now I suppose working directly with you. " Marcus almost smiled. "You already did that," he said. "I did it before I drove over here, because it was right, not because you asked. I'm trying, Marcus. I know I have a long way to go, but I'm trying. " Marcus looked at this woman sitting at his kitchen table, this billionaire who had humiliated him, and then run across a hangar in tears when she thought he might die.
Who had promoted the engineer who reported her before Marcus even asked her to. Who had driven across the city to a neighborhood she'd never seen to tell him the ugly truth about herself over a cup of instant coffee. And he understood that the person sitting across from him was not the same person who'd held that microphone two days ago. Something had cracked open in her. The same thing that had cracked open in him up in that cockpit when he finally let himself cry.