"I'm not accepting it," Turner said. "If you choose to resign, that's your right. But nobody on my side asked for it, and I don't want it."
"Forgive me," she said. "I'd have thought it would be simpler."
"Much simpler. Firing you would be the easiest thing I do this year. Everyone in this building would know exactly what it meant: that I have power now, and that it costs something to insult me." He looked at her steadily. "Not to do what you did. To do it to me. If you had said that sentence to the man who delivers the water, you would still have your job, and nobody would ever have given it a name. That's what firing you would teach. I'd rather not teach it."
He set a thin binder on the table and turned it to face her.
"My team started the file review yesterday afternoon. I asked them to start with your group, and I'll be honest about why: because of yesterday. I wanted to know whether it was a sentence, or a sentence in a paragraph." He opened it to a table. "Nineteen declined prospects over five years from Black- and Latino-owned businesses. Fourteen flagged by your desk for additional diligence that doesn't appear in comparable files. Most of the fourteen withdrew on their own."
She looked at the page and recognized names. A bakery distributor in Washington Heights. A group of dental practices in Jamaica, Queens. A woman in Newark who made custom millwork. She remembered, with terrible clarity, writing need more comfort on founder in a margin. She remembered writing it in perhaps a dozen margins. She had always thought of it as prudence. It was practically her signature.
"Some of those were judgment calls," she said, and her voice was not steady. "Some of those companies genuinely didn't—"
"Some, maybe. I'd like to know which. I think you would too." He closed the binder. "Here's the offer. You can take Mr. Brandt's package; it's a good one and I'll honor it. Or you can stay. If you stay, you're no longer a managing director. You're a director, at a director's pay, which is about forty percent less. For six months you'll lead a review of every declined prospect in your group going back five years — all of them, not just these — with Mr. Santos and an outside reviewer I'll choose. You'll write each one up. Not what we told the client. What actually happened, and why. Where we were wrong, we'll tell them so, in writing. Where we were right, we'll say that too."
"And Ms. Osei?"
"Ms. Osei's account belongs to Ms. Osei. Anjali Rao is calling her this morning to tell her she can choose who handles it. She may not choose you. In her place, I don't think I would."
Lindsay looked at the empty chair at the head of the table. "May I ask why this firm? You could have bought anything."