I plan to acquire a controlling interest, he said. Privately, legally, as was my right. Why? He set his hands flat on the table. Not defensively, just grounded.
Because Caldwell Horizon has 17,000 employees, he said. And for the past 3 years, the decisions being made in this building have been quietly destroying their futures. Not loudly, not obviously, but consistently. He looked at her. I don't think you know the full extent of it.
Something crossed her face. Not agreement, not yet, but something. What does that mean? Gerald said it means there are financial patterns in this company that don't match the public reporting. Damen said it means there are individuals, at least one of whom is in a senior position, who have been using internal systems to redirect resources in ways that the board has not been told about.
He paused. I've been watching it happen for 14 months. The room was quiet. You're talking about fraud, Clare Hensley said. I'm talking about what the evidence shows, Damian said.
I'll let the investigators use their own language. Victoria's jaw was tight. Who are you talking about? Damian opened the folder. He removed a second document.
This one longer, dense with data. He slid it across the table. This is a preliminary report, he said. I have more. I wanted to share this today in this room.
Before anything goes further, he looked at Victoria directly. Because I don't think this is about you. I think you've been running a company while someone else was quietly burning it down from the inside. She took the report. She read it the way she'd read the first document carefully.
Then with increasing stillness, the kind of stillness that comes when information is arriving that reorganizes something deep inside you. She turned a page, then another. Gerald leaned over to see it. His color changed. This Gerald started is accurate.
Damian said, "I've had three independent firms verify the findings." Victoria set the report down. She didn't look at Gerald. She looked at Damen. Adrien, she said it wasn't a question. The patterns began approximately 2 years after his promotion to chief operating officer.