Can he do that? Technically, under the current interim bylaws that were drafted as part of the merger framework bylaws, his team wrote, "Yes, he can." She was already reaching for her jacket, which means he came prepared for today. The leak was step one. The board session is step two.
Whatever he's planning for tonight, it's the part he actually wants. She stopped with her jacket half on, looked at Marcus. The announcement event is in 6 days, she said. I don't think it's going to wait 6 days. Marcus understood the whole shape of it in that moment.
The leaked documents were never meant to remove her permanently. The attorneys had moved too fast for that. They were meant to destabilize her, to put her on defense, to force the conversation about the merger into a publicressured time compressed space where Hawthorne controlled the terms. And then at the announcement event in front of the cameras and the board and the media, he would propose not as a question, as a conclusion. The kind of conclusion that is designed to feel like it's already been decided so that the only graceful option is to agree.
Marcus said, "You know what he's doing? I've known for 2 days." She said, "I didn't have proof until this morning. Now I have the proof and I have 6 days." She finished putting on her jacket.
She looked at him with an expression that was for the first time he had ever seen completely unguarded. No CEO, no armor, no practiced composure, just a woman standing in her own office telling the truth to the one person in the building who had earned it. "I am not going to let him turn my company's announcement into a personal performance," she said. and I am not going to let this board make one more decision about my life that I didn't authorize. What are you going to do? Marcus asked.
She picked up her phone. Tonight, she said, "I'm going to go sit in that board meeting and I'm going to listen to everything Richard Hawthorne says, and I'm going to remember every single word of it." She moved toward the door, stopped with her hand on the frame, looked back at him. "What you said a few minutes ago," she said. I heard it.
All of it. He held her gaze. I know, she said quietly. Me, too. And then she walked out.
Marcus stood in the empty office. Outside, Atlanta was moving through the late afternoon the way Atlanta always did, loud, warm, indifferent to the small but seismic things happening inside the buildings that lined its skyline. He could hear the faint ambient sound of the city through the glass. He stood there for a moment and breathed. Me too.
Two words. He had gone 11 years. Three of them in this building. Three of them watching her across lobbies and through glass and in brief intersections that he had turned into something he filed quietly under professional. And now those two words were in the room with him and they were going to stay there.
He picked up his bag. He went back to the third floor to collect the rest of his tools. He did the end of day walkthrough. He checked the lobby panels. He confirmed the evening security equipment was functional.