I have a mortgage. I have. You have 10 seconds to stand up and let security escort you off the premises before I call the police and have you arrested for corporate sabotage," Evelyn interrupted. Greg looked at Jack. There was no defiance left. Just a pathetic, crumbling man who had built his entire identity on a title that had just been stripped away.
Jack didn't smile. He didn't gloat. He just looked right through him, exactly as he always had. Greg stood up, his legs shook. The security guard put a hand on his shoulder and guided him out of the room.
The door clicked shut. The remaining executives stared at the table. They were waiting to see who was next. "This is Jack Thornton," Evelyn announced, gesturing slightly to her right. "He is the new chief technology officer of Omnicorp Solutions.
He reports directly to me. He does not report to this board. You do not email him. You do not request meetings with him. If you have a technological requirement, you submit a ticket to his department and you wait.
A man in a sharp blue suit, raised his hand nervously. Miss Cross, with all due respect, Mr. Thornton was a maintenance technician, putting him in charge of a billion-doll infrastructure. Mr. Thornton built the infrastructure. Evelyn cut him off. He wrote the architecture that saved this company today.
He has more talent in his grease stained fingers than this entire room has in its collective overpaid brains. She leaned forward. He has a discretionary budget of $5 million to replace the hardware you lot refused to upgrade. He is untouchable. If he fires a developer, they stay fired.
If he requests a server migration, it happens yesterday. Do we have an understanding? A chorus of rapid, terrified nods rippled down the table. Evelyn stood up. Good.
Clean up the PR mess. I want a press release stating the outage was a scheduled stress test that concluded successfully. Go. The room cleared out in less than 30 seconds. Jack sat at the table.
The mahogany felt cold under his palms. The sheer speed of corporate violence was jarring. Yesterday, he was begging for scraps. Today, he owned the kitchen. Evelyn walked toward the door, stopping behind Jack's chair.
"Your contract is locked, Mr. Thornton," she said. "The funds are in your department account. The HR directives have been updated." Jack looked up at her. "You move fast.
I don't have time to move slowly," Evelyn replied. She looked out the glass walls toward the waiting area. Chloe was asleep on the expensive leather sofa, the phone resting on her chest. Take the rest of the week off. Ninu n placed to an avarest.