Then she said, "3 years ago, when they removed you from the project, did you consider legal action?" "Yes," Daniel said. Why didn't you pursue it? He was quiet for a moment, not because the answer was complicated, because it was personal and he was deciding how much of it to give. I had a 9-year-old daughter and a mortgage and a legal battle that I was told could take four to 5 years with no guaranteed outcome, he said. And I had a job offer from Blackwood to stay on in a maintenance role with full benefits.
So, I made the decision that a father makes, not the decision that would have been most satisfying. The practical one. Victoria looked at him. That's the part of this that I keep coming back to. She said, "Not Richard.
Richard is what Richard did is going to have consequences. And those consequences are being set in motion right now. But you you chose to stay in a building where you'd been wronged in a job that was a fraction of what you were capable of for 3 years because it was the stable choice for your daughter." She paused. And while you were here, you kept submitting reports that you had every reason to believe nobody was reading. Somebody might have read them eventually, Daniel said.
But they didn't. No, they didn't. He looked at her evenly. But I was still right. And the documentation still existed.
And today you found it. Victoria was quiet. Daniel said, "I didn't stay because I thought justice was coming. I stayed because the work was here and the work was worth doing. He paused.
That's not nobility. That's just how I'm built. Victoria looked at him for a long moment. And then she said something she hadn't planned to say that came up from somewhere below the level of professional calculation and boardroom management and all the careful strategic thinking she'd been doing all day. She said, "I threw a manual at you this morning." You did, Daniel said in front of 40 people.
43, Daniel said. I counted. Something moved in Victoria's expression. She pressed her lips together. I'm going to issue a formal apology in writing.
And I'm going to do it publicly. You don't have to. I know I don't have to, she said. I want to. There's a difference.