Victoria, I need a few minutes. I'm busy, Peter. You're going to want to make time for this one. Something in his voice made her look up. Peter Sun had never once in six years spoken to her in that tone.
He came in, closed the door, and set the folder on her desk, and he did not sit down, which was itself a message. There's a governance investigation, he said. As of this morning, independent counsel reporting directly to the board, specifically to a special committee chaired by Coleman. It's confidential. I'm only telling you because I'm legally required to inform you of a litigation hold that affects your files, your email, your phone, and your calendar.
As of right now, you are not permitted to delete, alter, or destroy any company record. Nothing. Not a voicemail, not a post-it note. Victoria's mouth had gone dry. An investigation into what?
I'm not permitted to characterize the scope. Peter, she stood up. I built this company. You work for me. Tell me what this is.
And Peter Sun looked at her with something that was almost but not quite sympathy. And he said the sentence that made the floor tilt under her feet. That's the thing, Victoria. As of 9:00 this morning, I don't work for you. On a matter like this, general counsel reports to the board.
I work for them now. And my strong advice to you as the one piece of genuine counsel I can still give you as a human being, get your own lawyer, a good one. Today. He picked up nothing because there was nothing to pick up. He delivered the whole thing in the folder and in eight sentences.
He walked to the door and then he stopped and without turning around he said one more thing. I was in the building the day he came. I didn't see it happen but I heard about it within the hour from three different people and every single one of them told it the same way. You want to know how I knew this day was coming? He finally turned.
Because when the same story travels that fast, told the same way by people who don't even like each other, it's not a rumor. It's a reckoning. It was always going to come. It just needed a door to walk through. He left.
Victoria stood alone and for a long moment, she did not move at all. Then she reached for her phone to call her assistant to call Emily, to have Emily start pulling files to have Emily. And she stopped with her hand on the phone as a cold new understanding arrived. Emily, the minutes, the threat. If you fire me for this, I'll go straight to Mr. Coleman.
Emily had gone to Coleman. Of course, she had. Emily had probably gone to Coleman the same night. Victoria had threatened the one person in the building who kept the records, and that person had walked those records straight up the chain. And now there was an investigation with Victoria's own general counsel telling her to lawyer up.
She'd done it to herself again. She could feel it now. The pattern, the way every single move she'd made to protect herself had instead handed her enemies another brick. But feeling it and stopping it were two different things. And Victoria Hayes had never in her life known how to stop.
So instead of stopping, she made it worse. At 5:15, she called the head of HR, a nervous man named Doug Finney, into her office and she closed the door and she said the words that would later become, Exhibit F. Doug, I need you to do something for me and I need you to understand that it's a performance matter, nothing more. I've had serious concerns about Emily Ross' work quality for some time. Accuracy issues, discretion issues. I need those concerns documented formally starting today.
Backdated where the record supports it. I also want you to look very hard at Angela Morris in procurement. I've heard she's been accessing files outside her role, which is a security violation, and I want that on the record, too. Build me a file on both of them quietly by end of week. Bye.
Doug Finney was a coward and everyone knew it and Victoria was counting on it. But even a coward has a moment once in his life when the thing he's being asked to do is so clearly a cliff edge that even a coward's survival instinct kicks in. Victoria, Doug said carefully, there's a litigation hold. This has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with that.
You're asking me to build retaliatory files on two employees who— Victoria, everybody in the building knows Emily and Angela went to Coleman. If I start papering their files the day after they became whistleblowers, that's not a performance action. That's textbook retaliation. It's the single most illegal thing I could possibly do right now. And it wouldn't just end you.
It had end me for one heartbeat. Victoria stared at him, and the naked calculation in her eyes was so total that Doug actually took a step back. So, you're refusing, she said. I'm protecting us both from a federal problem. Get out.
Doug Finney got out. And Doug Finney, being a coward, did the one thing a cornered coward occasionally does that saves the world. He covered himself. He went straight back to his office and he wrote a detailed memo timestamped describing exactly what the CEO had just asked him to do and exactly how he'd refused. And then he emailed it to the independent counsel because Peter Sun had sent everyone in leadership the contact address that morning.
And because Doug Finney had suddenly urgently decided that his own skin was worth more than his loyalty to a sinking woman, by 6:00 that evening, the investigation had its first documented act of retaliation delivered voluntarily by the head of HR less than 9 hours after the investigation began. Victoria had done it again. She'd reached for a weapon and it had turned into evidence in her hand. That was the pattern now. She just couldn't see it because a person drowning cannot study the water across town at 6:30.
Nathan Carter's phone rang and it was Daniel Brooks and Nathan let it go to the second ring before he picked up because he wanted to hear how the man opened. Mr. Carter, this is Dan Brooks over at Pioneer. You're Mr. Webb tells me you're the fellow who sent a spy into my building last week. Nathan smiled. I prefer analyst.
Analyst spy, whatever you call it. The kid was polite, so I'll let it slide. Brooks's voice was warm, gravelly, unpretentious. The voice of a man who'd never learned to be anyone but himself. Now, your people came to me with a term sheet that has more money in it than I've seen in my whole life.