Solid enough that I could put them in front of the board at the announcement event instead of accepting Hawthorne's proposal." She paused. If I do that publicly with the media present, it forces an immediate vote rather than a 7-day deliberation. The board can't easily defer in that environment. That's a highwire move.
Marcus said, "Yes, if the alternative terms aren't strong enough, if even one board member who's in Hawthorne's corner raises a credibility question, you lose the narrative before it starts." "Yes," she said again. "You need the numbers to be airtight. My CFO is working on the presentation now. Marcus was quiet.
He was running through the logic the way he ran through maintenance problems looking for the point of failure, the hidden fault in the circuit. And then he found it. Hawthorne knows about the alternative partner, he said. Victoria went very still. How do you?
She started. Because the leaked documents, Marcus said, they weren't about the merger terms. Not really. They were about creating legal exposure that forces your attention here on defense while someone goes looking through your files for whatever else you're protecting. He leaned forward slightly.
The timing of the scrub, 1000 p. m. to 2:00 a. m. Your attorneys were contacted at what time this morning? 6:15. So between 10:00 p. m. and 6:00 a. m. someone had 8 hours in your document system. They restored enough of the scrubbed files to avoid triggering a complete audit flag, but they were looking for something specific.
He paused. Did you have any documentation of the alternative partner discussions in the system? She picked up her phone, called her CFO directly, asked the question, listened. Her expression didn't change, but her free hand, the one on the desk, pressed flat against the surface. She hung up.
A preliminary term sheet, she said, stored in a draft folder. The CFO thought it was secure because it was under a project name that didn't reference the partner. A beat. It's gone. Deleted some time last night.
The CFO didn't notice until just now. The room was very quiet. He knows, Marcus said. He knows, she confirmed. This was the moment Marcus felt it. the weight of it, the specific seriousness of a situation that has just shifted from difficult to genuinely dangerous, not physically, professionally.
Hawthorne now knew what Victoria was planning and had 4 days to respond. "Can you reconstruct the term sheet from memory and external communications?" Marcus asked. "We can," she said. "It'll take 48 hours to rebuild properly.
That leaves you 4 days before the event. Three, she corrected. I need a full day to brief the board members who aren't in his pocket before the event or I walk into that room without allies. 3 days, he said. She looked at him.