Did you tell Curtis to write the position? She held his gaze. I told Curtis that if the project produced what I expected it to produce, I wanted a permanent solution and not a workaround. He designed the position himself. But you asked him to.
I asked him to think about what the building actually needed. A pause. He thought about it and came up with your name. Daniel looked at her. Thank you, he said.
Don't thank me. The work justified it. The work justified it, he agreed. And you made sure the right people were looking at the work. That's not nothing.
She held his gaze for a moment. Something moved through her expression. The thing that happened when she received something genuine and didn't quite know where to put it. Dinner Saturday, she said. Yes, I'll find somewhere new.
You always find somewhere new. I like new places. She started walking again. They don't have expectations. They had been having dinner every Friday or Saturday for 6 weeks by the time Elliot Graves made his second move.
Daniel heard about this one from Victoria directly, which was different from the first time, and told him something about how things had changed between them. She called him on a Wednesday evening. He was helping Eli with a math worksheet fractions, which Eli approached with the specific outrage of someone who considered them a personal affront, and he stepped into the hallway to take the call. "Graves went to the board," she said without preamble, without softening it. That was one of the things he had come to rely on.
She gave him things straight. When this afternoon he requested a closed session with three board members, I found out through my general counsel who sits on two of the relevant committees. What did he tell them? That my judgment has been compromised. That a personal relationship with an employee has influenced personnel and operational decisions.
That the board should consider whether an independent review of executive decision-making is warranted. A pause. He used the word compromised four times. I'm told he had a prepared document. Daniel leaned against the hallway wall.
He's been building this since the audit failed, he said. Yes, the audit was never the main event. It was reconnaissance. What do the board members think? Two of the three are people I've worked with for a long time.
One of them called me within an hour of the session. Another pause. The third is Raymond Holt. He's been on the board for two years and has a history with Graves that predates Sterling Horizon. So Graves has at least one vote, at least one, possibly leverage over a second.
Her voice was steady. The operational steadiness that he now understood cost her something to maintain. This is a different situation than the audit Daniel. A board inquiry into executive judgment is I know what it is. I want you to understand what it could mean for the company, for my position.
I understand it. And I want you to understand that I'm not telling you this so you'll offer to step back from the position. I'm telling you because you have a right to know what's happening. He was quiet for a moment. How bad is it?
Honestly, honestly. She took the breath. If Graves gets a formal inquiry authorized, it creates a narrative that's hard to untell, even if the inquiry clears me. The story becomes CEO investigated for judgment lapse. That story follows a company.
A pause and it follows the people connected to it. I can handle a story. You have a 9-year-old Daniel who is extremely good at handling things he didn't expect. He straightened up. What do you need from me?
Nothing. That's what I'm telling you. I don't need anything from you. I need you to know what's happening so you're not blindsided. Victoria, what what do you need?
Not what you want to handle yourself. What do you actually need? A long pause. I need to not feel alone in this, she said very quietly in the voice she used when she wasn't performing anything. That's all.
You're not, he said. Go handle it. I'll be here when you're done. Another pause longer. I don't know what to do with you sometimes, she said.
Not as a complaint, as a true thing. Yes, you do. She made a sound that was almost a laugh. Good night, Daniel. Good night.
He went back to the kitchen. Eli looked up from his worksheet with the expression of someone who had been pretending not to listen and was not entirely convincing about it. Everything okay? Yes. Who was that?
Someone from work. Eli looked at him with Sophie's eyes that particular Amber Brown that was very good at seeing through things. The important someone from work. Daniel sat back down. Finish your fractions.
That means yes. It means finish your fractions. Eli smiled a small private smile that he directed at his worksheet and picked up his pencil. Victoria handled it. That was the only way Daniel could describe what she did over the following 10 days.
Watching from the position of someone who was close enough to see it, but outside the room where it happened. She went to each of the three board members individually, not as a group individually in separate conversations tailored to what she knew about each person and what Graves had told them and what they actually needed to hear to make their own clear-eyed judgment. She brought documentation, not defensive documentation, not a rebuttal of Graves' claims, but a 10-year record of the decisions she had made and their outcomes laid out without narration. Trusting the numbers to speak in the way she had learned to trust numbers from watching Daniel let data carry its own argument. She also did something that Daniel didn't find out about until later.