I took it public. I tripled the valuation. And this morning, four men who have been in this board for a combined total of 9 years decided that a manufactured scandal was sufficient reason to hand my company to a man who hasn't earned a single square foot of it. The room was very quiet. Marcus set the letter back on the desk.
He thought about what he was going to say for exactly 4 seconds. Then he said, "What do you need?" She looked at him. Not with surprise. She was past surprised today, but with something that was close to relief, which was its own kind of devastating to witness on the face of someone who rarely let anyone see underneath.
"I need the original documents," she said. The complete version with timestamps and revision history that proved the leaked drafts were early stage and that my final positions were different. They exist in our internal document management system. The problem is that Saurin had administrator access as part of the integration process. Our IT team is telling me the revision history on three key files was scrubbed sometime between 1000 p. m. and 2:00 a. m. last night.
Scrub doesn't mean gone, Marcus said. She looked at him. You know, document systems. I know how buildings work, he said. And buildings run on the same principle as everything else.
You can clean the surface, but if you know where to look, the original is usually still there somewhere. He paused. Your system runs backups to physical servers in the building. She sat up slightly. The server room on 12, which backs up automatically at 9:00 p. m. every night.
He could see her following the logic. If the scrubbing happened after 10 last night's 900 p. m. backup is clean, you have a full snapshot of those files exactly as they existed before anyone touched them. Victoria stared at him. "The server room on 12," she said very carefully, "is part of your maintenance oversight." "Has been for 2 years," he said.
The silence between them was different now. "Still serious, still waited, but with something new underneath it, something that felt like a door opening." "Marcus," she said. "I know," he said. "I know what I'm doing.
This isn't maintenance work. If this goes wrong, if anyone decides I acted outside my scope, I could lose my job. I won't let that happen. With respect, he said, you can't promise that right now. You just told me four board members are working against you.
Your protection is worth less today than it was yesterday. He held her gaze. I'm doing this anyway. I just needed you to understand that I know what I'm walking into. She looked at him for a long moment.
Something moved in her face that she didn't try to hide. "Why?" She asked. "Not as a corporate question, as a human one." Marcus picked up his maintenance bag from beside the door.