Clare didn't answer. She didn't have to. He knocked twice on the office door and went in. Victoria was standing at the window, jacket on every piece of her appearance, exactly in order, which Marcus recognized immediately as armor. When the outside is composed, it means the inside is the opposite.
She turned when he came in. Her eyes were steady, but her jaw was tight, and there was something behind her composure that he had never seen there before. It wasn't fear. It was something colder. the particular expression of someone who has just understood the full shape of a betrayal. Close the door, she said.
He closed it. Sit down. I'll stand. He said it gently, not as a challenge. Just the truth.
He needed to be able to move. Sitting felt like being contained. And whatever was in this room right now required room to breathe. She looked at him for a moment. Then she said, "I know who leaked it."
Marcus said nothing. He waited. Richard's financial director, a man named Saurin. He's been embedded in our due diligence process for 6 weeks under the pretense of preparing the integration framework. She said it with the controlled precision of someone who has already processed the anger and is operating on the other side of it.
What he was actually doing was building a narrative. The documents he leaked are real. The context is fabricated. The notes they're attributing to me are taken from drafts. Early drafts before I pushed back on those terms.
The final positions are different. But if you pull early drafts out of context, you can make it look like I approved terms I actually rejected. Why? Marcus asked. What does Hawthorne gain from this?
Victoria walked to her desk. She picked up a single piece of paper and held it out to him. He took it, read it. It was a letter from the board dated that morning. The language was corporate and careful, which meant it was devastating.
In summary, given the uncertainty created by the leaked documents and the reputational exposure to the Langford brand, the board was recommending that Victoria step back from operational leadership temporarily while an independent review was conducted. Pending the review's outcome, Richard Hawthorne would assume interim oversight of the merger process. Marcus looked up from the letter. "They're trying to remove you," he said. "They're succeeding," she said quietly.
"Three of those board members have been in Hawthorne's pocket for months." I didn't see it clearly until this morning. She sat down. For the first time since he'd entered the room, she looked tired all the way through, not just around the edges. I built this company from a $400,000 loan and 12 years of work.