Then she moved on to the following agenda item and the meeting continued. Several months later, Apex Meridian completed a different acquisition in the same sector, a smaller firm with less historical prestige, but more internal coherence, whose leadership team, Maya, had evaluated over three in-person meetings and found to be people she could work with over time. People who treated their subordinates with the same respect they brought to a boardroom, people who told you a hard truth directly rather than dressing it in civility. The deal closed without ceremony. There was no gala.
There was no grand ballroom. There was a conference room on the third floor of a building in Marietta. A signed set of documents, a brief handshake, and then everyone returned to the work. The integration went well. The firm's quarterly reports in the year that followed reflected the benefit of it.
And Maya read those reports each quarter with the particular satisfaction of someone who had built something real on a foundation she had chosen carefully rather than accepted by default. Whitmore Industries completed a restructuring that was by all external accounts handled competently under the circumstances. Though the terms were significantly less favorable than those the Apex Meridian offer would have provided. The family retained nominal control of the firm but had a reduced ownership percentage and with a new board structure that limited their unilateral authority. Richard made several public appearances in the months following in which he said the right things about the firm's resilience and future direction.
He was believed by some. There was a final meeting between Richard Whitmore and Maya Brooks arranged through mutual professional contacts approximately 8 months after the gayla in a conference room at a neutral law office in Midtown Atlanta. Richard had requested it. He had said through the intermediary that he wanted only to speak with her directly without legal agenda, without any expectation of a business outcome. Maya had agreed because she believed in closure and did not believe in unnecessary distance between people who had been consequentially connected and because she had learned that unfinished conversations have a way of occupying space in your attention that could be used more productively.
She was not afraid of the meeting. She was not angry going into it. She was simply present the way she was present for every meeting that required her full attention, which was every meeting she agreed to take. They sat across from each other at a small table. There was water.