A camera swung toward him. Victoria, he said, and his voice was amplified because the mic was still live and the room heard everything. I think we owe these people a complete picture. The meridian deal hasn't been fully vetted. The board hasn't Richard.
Her voice was even. She turned to face him on the stage and Marcus could see her profile from the back of the room, the set of her jaw, the stillness of her. You're not on the agenda. I'm a board invited stakeholder. You're a guest, she said.
And you're on my stage uninvited. She looked at Whitfield who was standing frozen at the side of the stage. Bernard, Whitfield cleared his throat. Mr. Hawthorne will open the floor for questions after the board vote.
If you'd like to. This is a regular, Hawthorne said. His voice was still controlled, but there was something underneath it now. a pressure the sound of a plan encountering friction it hadn't accounted for. It is. Victoria agreed.
So is leaking private corporate documents to financial journalists. So is scrubbing revision histories at 2 in the morning. So is asking a man you've never met to convince me to accept terms I'd already rejected. She paused. Today we're putting the irregular things on the table.
I'm happy to start with mine. The room went absolutely still. Hawthorne stood on that stage for three full seconds. Then he stepped down. His PR director was already on her phone.
His associates were moving. The choreography he had planned was collapsing quietly around him and the room was watching and the cameras were recording and there was nothing left to manage. Marcus exhaled slowly. The CFO stepped to the podium. The presentation ran for 22 minutes.
The board voted at 1:47 p. m. 5 to3 in favor of the Meridian Partnership. The room responded the way rooms respond when the thing that was supposed to be inevitable turns out to be something else entirely, not chaos relief, mostly. The particular exhale of 200 people releasing a breath they didn't know they'd been holding. Marcus stayed where he was at the back of the room until the crowd began to move and mix and the immediate post announcement chaos sorted itself into smaller conversations.
He watched the board members cluster around Victoria. He watched Adrienne Park shake her hand with the firm warmth of someone who has just done something they're proud of. He watched Hawthorne exit through the side door without speaking to anyone. He waited. At 2:34, Victoria found him.