Adrien had known. He had run because he'd known, not because he'd been caught. The difference mattered, not legally. But it mattered to Damian's understanding of what had happened, the specific texture of it. The chess game to mention that he had been inside without knowing all the pieces on the board.
The analyst in the broker network, Damen said, "What happens to him? Federal charges." Sandra said securityurities fraud, wire fraud, obstruction. Is he cooperating actively? Then it's in your hands. Damian said, "I don't have a position on his prosecution." A pause.
Most people in your position would. Sandra said, "I know." Damen said, "I'm interested in the outcome for the company and its employees. The criminal process that's yours. That's what it's designed for." Sandra was quiet for a moment. Not a processing silence.
Something else, Mr. Brooks. She said, "In 20 years of financial crimes work, I've briefed a lot of people whose money was involved in cases like this. I've never briefed anyone who responded the way you have." How's that? Like someone who was genuinely only interested in the right outcome, she said.
Not the satisfying outcome, the right one. He thought about Edward Walsh in a coffee shop. 11 Years ago about sitting on a bench at the lake after reading the email that told him his company was gone. About the specific choice he had made that day. Not emotional, not dramatic, just structural, foundational the way you set a corner post when you're building something tended to last.
Someone taught me the difference a long time ago, he said. Marcus Hills promotion was announced internally on a Tuesday morning. Three weeks after the arrest, Damen had spent two weeks talking to Marcus. Directly real conversations, not interviews, not performance reviews about what he understood, what he had seen in 22 years, what he thought the company needed that it had never had. Marcus had answered with the directness of a man who had been asked his opinion approximately, never by anyone with the authority to act on it, and who discovered in the asking that he had been saving up a great deal of considered thought for exactly this moment.
The title was director of corporate ethics and employee advocacy. It was a new position. There was no job description template for it, no salary band, no existing framework. Damian and Marcus built it from scratch over four conversations, and the version they arrived at was specific enough to mean something and broad enough to matter. Marcus would have direct access to the board.
His reports would not pass through the CEO's office. He would have authority to conduct independent investigations into any reported concern from any level of the organization and his findings would be presented quarterly to the full board without filtering or editing. When Damian told him the terms, Marcus sat with them for a full minute. "This is real," Marcus said. "Not a question.