Chapter 2 - THE FOUNDER NOBODY RECOGNIZED
For several seconds, the only sound in the boardroom was the low hum of the ventilation system.
Victor remained near the door as if he had forgotten how legs worked.
Elias leaned back in the high-backed chair.
“I asked a question.”
Graham recovered first.
“Elias, this is obviously a surprise.”
“That is not an answer.”
“We believed you were still in Maine.”
“I was.”
“When did you come back?”
“Eighteen days ago.”
Graham glanced at the maintenance uniform.
“And you thought this was necessary?”
Elias’s expression did not change.
“I thought it was ridiculous.”
A few people shifted.
“Then on my first night,” Elias continued, “I watched a contractor get screamed at because an executive spilled wine on a carpet. On my third night, I saw a security guard tell a pregnant cleaning woman she had to clock out before finishing her shift because overtime was ‘not approved.’ On my sixth, I found an engineer crying in Stairwell C because her manager told her reporting a safety problem would make her ‘unpromotable.’”
He looked down the table.
“By day ten, I stopped thinking the disguise was ridiculous.”
No one spoke.
Maya stood just outside the door, unsure whether she was allowed to breathe.
Elias pointed to the chair beside him.
“Ms. Reed, sit.”
Victor stepped forward. “She isn’t part of this meeting.”
Elias looked at him.
“Neither were you when you threatened her job in my hallway.”
Victor stiffened.
“She challenged a senior executive in front of staff.”
“She defended a janitor.”
“She ignored hierarchy.”
Elias’s voice hardened.
“Good.”
Victor blinked.
“I built this company with three engineers, two borrowed computers, and a receptionist who was smarter than all of us,” Elias said. “If hierarchy becomes more important than truth, hierarchy is the first thing that needs to be broken.”
Maya sat.
Her hands trembled beneath the table.
Graham exhaled through his nose.
“Elias, I respect what you built. But you stepped away seven years ago. Novaris has forty-eight thousand employees now. We operate in twenty-three countries. You cannot evaluate a modern corporation by wandering around with a mop.”
Elias opened the yellow envelope.
“No?”
He removed a stack of photographs.
The first showed a night-shift time sheet.
The second showed a trash bag filled with shredded personnel reports.
The third showed a whiteboard photographed through a half-open office door.
At the top someone had written: BLACKBIRD — EXPOSURE CONTROL.
Graham’s jaw tightened.
Victor looked at the ceiling.
Maya stared at the picture.
She knew that word.
Blackbird.
She had seen it once in a folder she was not supposed to have access to.
Elias noticed her reaction.
“You recognize it.”
It was not a question.
Maya hesitated.
Victor cut in. “She’s an intern. She recognizes whatever she thinks will keep her in the room.”
Maya turned to him.
“No.”
Victor’s eyes narrowed.
She looked at Elias.
“I saw that name two weeks ago.”
Graham’s expression became flat.
“Where?” Elias asked.
“In a testing directory for Helix.”
The chief technology officer, Andrew Bell, spoke for the first time.
“That directory is restricted.”
“I know.”
“How did you access it?”
“I didn’t. Someone attached a path to a bug ticket by mistake.”
“And what exactly did you see?”
Maya’s mouth went dry.
A warning from her supervisor flashed through her mind.
Forget the file.
Forget the names.
If you like this internship, stop being curious.
She looked at Victor.
Then Graham.
Then Elias.
“A list of employees,” she said. “Some current. Some former.”
“How many?”
“Maybe forty.”
“What was beside the names?”
Maya took a breath.
“Labels.”
“What labels?”
“Risk. Loyalty. Litigation probability.”
Someone at the far end swore under his breath.
Elias folded his hands.
“Anything else?”
Maya nodded.
“There was one column called Family Leverage.”
This time, even Victor looked at her.
Elias became very still.
“Did you copy it?”
“No. The folder vanished the next morning.”
“Who knew you saw it?”
“My supervisor.”
“Name.”
“Daniel Sloane.”
The chief technology officer closed his eyes.
Elias noticed.
“Problem, Andrew?”
Andrew Bell looked at Graham before answering.
“Daniel Sloane was terminated yesterday.”
Maya’s stomach dropped.
“For what?”
“No longer a fit.”
Elias stared at him.
“That phrase has buried more cowardice than any sentence in corporate America.”
He turned to Maya.
“Ms. Reed, did Mr. Sloane say anything to you before he left?”
Maya thought of the message on her phone that morning.
A message she had assumed was spam.
She took out her phone.
“There was this.”
She placed it on the table.
One line.
NO MATTER WHAT THEY SAY, THE HELIX NUMBERS ARE FAKE.
Graham’s voice sharpened.
“This meeting is over.”
Elias looked at him.
“No.”
Graham stood.
“You cannot walk in after seven years and launch an amateur investigation based on an intern’s text message.”
Elias smiled for the first time.
It was not a warm smile.
“I already launched the investigation.”
Graham froze.
“When?”
“Six weeks ago.”
The glass doors opened behind them.
A woman in a dark blue suit stepped inside carrying two locked document cases.
Serena Park.
Corporate secretary.
Outside counsel to the Ward Voting Trust.
And the one person in the building Graham Voss had hoped not to see.
She placed the cases beside Elias.
“We have the server preservation order,” she said. “And the independent forensic team is downstairs.”
Graham’s face went white.
May you like
Then every screen in the boardroom went black at the same time.
