He was wrong about what the math was measuring. She thought about what Gavin had said in the kitchen on Christmas morning. Not to her, not in any context meant to convince her of anything. If I can help and I don't, then what do the principles I talk about actually mean? She thought about Lucy on the kitchen counter asking a stranger with $7 billion what she had.
She thought about Maryanne handing her a candle without asking a single question about where she came from. She thought about Gavin bending down to pick up that folder and not standing back up for a long time. She looked at Keen. "No," she said. He studied her.
"No." "To which part?" "All of it." Keen leaned back. He had the expression of someone who had expected this and was not particularly inconvenienced by it. "Then we go to a vote." "Yes," Elise said. "We do." She stood, picked up his documents, and tucked them under her arm. "I'll see you on the 9th," she said.
The board meeting was held on the morning of January 9th. 14 Members, a conference room on the 40th floor, snow again, this time lighter, the drifting kind that coated everything without making it difficult to move through. Elise stood at the head of the table. She had prepared remarks. She set them aside.
Before we begin the formal vote, she said, I want to address the reporting that ran last week, not to manage the narrative, to correct the record. The room was very still. 3 Months ago, during due diligence on the Redwood acquisition, I reviewed personnel files on Redwood's mid-level operations staff. One file was for a man named Gavin Brooks. His record indicated a pattern of conduct I found unusual, not because it was problematic, but because it was consistent in a way I rarely see.
He had filed an internal safety report that delayed a project, cost himself a promotion, and was never made public. He hadn't sought recognition for it. He had simply done it and continued working. No one moved. I arranged to be in a location I knew he would visit on Christmas Eve.
I wanted to observe how he conducted himself in an informal setting before he had any reason to perform for my benefit. That is the full extent of what was arranged. She kept her voice level. He invited me to his mother's home. He did not know who I was.
He had no idea Warren Meridian was considering Redwood. He never requested anything from me. No position, no compensation, no advantage of any kind. She looked down the table at Keen. The suggestion in the press that he sought to influence this acquisition through a personal relationship is false.
He explicitly refused the operations role when it was offered. And when I proposed using the company's communications resources to correct the public record, he told me not to. He said, and I'm quoting, "If you clean this up for me, it proves the story." She let that sit. I take full responsibility for engineering the initial meeting. It was an error in judgment, not because my intentions were wrong, but because I applied the same methods I use in business to a situation that required something else entirely, something I'm less practiced at.