And one of them belonged to Gerald. The board is excited. Gerald was saying Hawthorne Group brings Capital Connections international reach. This is the merger Victoria's been working toward for years. Another voice, one Marcus didn't recognize.
Does she have any reservations? A pause. Victoria always has reservations, Gerald said carefully. But she's a businesswoman first. She knows what this deal means for the company.
Marcus finished the sensor panel. He packed his tools. He walked out of the server room and down the hall and didn't say a word to anyone. But he thought about it the entire rest of the day. That evening, he picked Ava up from her afterchool program, and she talked the whole drive home about a science project on ecosystems and how her teacher, Mrs.
Patterson, didn't understand the difference between a food chain and a food web, which was, according to Ava, a serious professional failing. Marcus nodded and agreed and asked questions. And somewhere in the middle of her explaining why decomposers were actually the most important part of any ecosystem, he realized he was thinking about Victoria again. He caught himself, turned the radio up slightly, stopped thinking about it, or tried to. He was not successful.
Richard Hawthorne arrived in Atlanta on a Tuesday. Marcus knew because the building changed when powerful visitors came. There was a particular kind of tension that moved through the staff, a collective straightening of spines, a sharpening of smiles. The lobby flowers were replaced with fresh arrangements. The executive elevator got a thorough inspection that Marcus' crew had technically already performed the week before.
The catering team brought in reinforcements. Marcus watched all of it from his usual position, which was slightly to the side of everything close enough to manage, but far enough to observe. He was good at that. He had always been good at that. He first saw Hawthorne from across the lobby.
The man was exactly what Marcus expected, which he counted as a small personal failure. He had hoped to be surprised. He was not. Hawthorne was tall, silver-haired, wore a suit that probably cost more than Marcus' truck, and moved through the lobby with the relaxed confidence of someone who had never once in his adult life walked into a room and wondered if he belonged there. Every head turned when he walked in.
Victoria was there to meet him. Marcus was doing a walkthrough of the lobby electrical panel, legitimate scheduled work, when she came through the main entrance with two of her senior executives beside her. She saw Hawthorne. She smiled. The smile was correct.
Professional, warm, without being personal. Hawthorne reached out and shook her hand, then held it one second longer than necessary. Marcus tightened a connection on the panel that didn't need tightening. "Victoria," Hawthorne said in a voice designed to be heard in large spaces. "You look extraordinary.
Atlanta agrees with you." "Richard," she said. Welcome to Langford Towers. Our towers, he said smoothly. If the board has anything to say about it, she laughed.