The way it kept being just the two of them in rooms where important things happened. The board has suspended the removal recommendation pending the legal review. Victoria said Saurin has been removed from the building. Hawthorne's team is in damage control mode. Good.
Marcus said you saved my company today. I found a backup file. He said, "Your attorneys saved your company, Marcus." Her voice had a quality to it that stopped him. Not the CEO voice, the other one. the one he'd heard only in specific rooms at specific moments that had nothing to do with business.
Stop doing that. Doing what? Making yourself smaller than what you actually did. She looked at him squarely. I have 47 employees who could have been in that building today.
You were the only one I called. You were the only one who came. And when I asked you why, you gave me the most carefully impersonal answer you could construct. She paused. I'm asking you again why.
The room felt like it had the night of the gayla. That specific weighted silence. Marcus looked at the floor for one moment. Then he looked at her. Because I didn't want to watch you lose something you built, he said.
And because somewhere in the last 3 years, I stopped being able to pretend that I look at you the way I look at other people in this building. The words were out. Clean, clear, no taking them back. Victoria didn't move. She looked at him with an expression he had never seen on her face before.
Not in 3 years of watching her command rooms redirect crisis, handle every impossible situation with precision and grace. She looked like someone who had just been handed something they had stopped expecting to receive. "How long?" She asked quietly. Long enough that I should have said something sooner, he said.
Long enough that I'm embarrassed about all the times I didn't. She exhaled slowly, started to speak. Her phone rang. The timing was so specifically terrible that Marcus almost laughed. She looked at the screen and her expression changed not back to professional, but to something alert and sharp.
She answered, "Yes." A pause. when another pause longer. Her jaw tightened. Don't let anyone into that room. I'm coming down.
She hung up. Looked at Marcus. Hawthorne is in the building, she said. He's in the 28th floor conference room. He's called an emergency board session tonight without notifying me.