It's going to mean long nights. I've got arrangements for my daughter. Derek paused. You have a daughter? 7 years old.
Best person I know. Something in Dererick's expression shifted, not pity, which Darius did not want, but a kind of recognition. Dererick had three kids of his own. He understood the weight of that sentence. "Okay," Dererick said.
"Let's get to work. " The 72 hours were brutal. Darius worked backward through four systems simultaneously reconstructing what the actual numbers should have looked like, identifying where the corrupted data had branched off from the accurate record and building a presentation framework that would allow the client to see clearly not just what had gone wrong, but exactly what was real, what was accurate, and what the company was doing to ensure it never happened again. He slept 4 hours on Thursday night and three on Friday. He called his mother to cover for Amara, which he hated doing because his mother lived 40 minutes away, and he hated asking. But his mother arrived without a single complaint with a pot of her chicken soup and her reading glasses and her Sudoku book, and she kissed his cheek at the door and said, "Go do what you need to do.
We'll be fine. " He went back to work. On Saturday afternoon, 71 hours after Derek had come to his desk, Darius sent the completed presentation to his supervisor. Derek called him 12 minutes later. "This is exceptional," Derek said. "It's thorough," Darius said.
"No, it's exceptional. I've sent it to Hayes. " Darius went still. "You sent it directly to the CEO. She's been running this crisis personally. She needed to see this before the client call Monday morning. " A pause.
I hope that's all right. Darius thought about that. It's fine, he said. As long as it helps. It more than helps, Dererick said.
It might have just saved this account. The client call happened Monday. Darius was not on it. That was executive territory above his level, which was how it should be. He sat at his desk and worked on his regular assignments and did not allow himself to think too too much about what was happening in the glass conference room on the executive floor.
At 2:15 in the afternoon, his phone buzzed. Derek, they accepted the corrected framework. Client is staying. Meeting with Hayes this week. Darius read the message twice.
He exhaled slowly. Then he went back to work. The meeting with Victoria Hayes happened the following Thursday. It was brief, professional, and nothing like what Darius had expected. She came to his office, not the other way around.
That itself was unusual enough that two people in the hallway stopped and watched because when Victoria Hayes came to you, something significant was happening. She knocked on the open door. She was in the charcoal suit today, the one without the wrinkle at the shoulder. Her hair was exactly as it appeared in the website photograph. Mr.