Then her voice hardened.
“I’m sorry.”
I asked her to call an emergency board meeting at 6:30 a.m. and pull all executive conduct reports from the last eighteen months, including anything marked informal or resolved without action.
“That’s broader than tonight,” she said.
“Yes.”
Files arrived through the night.
At first, the pattern was quiet: complaints handled informally, women in senior roles leaving after exclusion from client dinners, promotions favoring loyalty over competence, a vendor contract awarded to one of Robert’s college friends and buried in committee notes.
Individually, each item had an explanation.
Together, they had a smell.
At 3:06 a.m., Marissa sent an encrypted packet.
Inside was a finance memo flagging irregular consulting payments through a subsidiary account. The payments were repeated, oddly timed, and coded as strategic advisory fees.
The recipient was Larkspur Consulting.
At the bottom of one invoice was a signature:
V. Blackwell.
Vivian.
The woman who had sent me toward the side entrance had been receiving consulting payments from the company her husband ran.