Darius read everything into the timing. He knocked on the open office door. Victoria was at her desk, but she wasn't looking at her computer. She was looking at a single piece of paper in her hand. And when she looked up, she set it face down on the desk with a deliberate motion that told him it was important and that he was not meant to see it.
"Close the door," she said. "He did. Sit down," he sat. She looked at him across the desk, the large uncluttered desk that said everything about how she organized her mind. And she took a breath that was not quite controlled.
What I said yesterday? She began. Was it a joke? He asked. No.
Then we have a conversation to have. Something moved across her face. Something that might in another woman in another context have been relief. Yes, we do. She folded her hands on the desk.
But before we have it, I need to ask you something. And I need you to answer honestly, not politely. Honestly, I don't really do polite at the expense of honest. Darius said, "I know. That's why I'm asking you a pause.
When you looked at me yesterday after I said what I said, what did you see? " Darius considered this. He could have deflected. He could have given her the professional careful answer. But she had asked him for honest and Coleman men did not lie when the truth was what was needed. I saw someone who had run out of options, he said, and was taking a risk she wouldn't normally take because something had made standing still even more dangerous than moving.
Victoria stared at him. Am I wrong? He asked. No, she said. You are not wrong.
She reached across the desk and turned the paper over. It was a legal document, multiple pages clipped together, dense text. He could read enough of it to see the words board agreement and succession clause and validity of leadership position before she spoke again. My grandfather founded this company, Victoria said. My father built it into what it is.
I have run it for 7 years and grown it by 300%. Her voice was even factual. She could have been reading a quarterly report. There is a clause in the original board agreement, a clause that was never disclosed to me until eight months ago, that allows the board to call a leadership review if the CEO does not meet certain stability criteria. Within a defined time frame, Darius was very still.