“At which part?”
The woman beside him looked up sharply.
“At the treatment you received. Unacceptable. Completely unacceptable.”
“Because it was me?”
“Of course not.”
“Then we should discuss Evelyn Brooks.”
His eyes moved toward Graham.
It was quick. It was enough.
“I understand an old complaint has been brought into this.”
“A prior complaint,” Julian said. “Its age does not establish its merits.”
Victor acknowledged him with a thin nod.
“We would like everyone to avoid drawing conclusions before all sides are heard.”
“I agree,” I said. “That includes the conclusion your company recorded nine months ago.”
The woman introduced herself as Elise Ward, outside counsel. She asked whether she could speak with Julian separately. He agreed after making it clear that the signing remained paused and all records were to be preserved.
Graham went with them. Victor stayed.
He looked around the room as though searching for a more favorable arrangement of furniture.
“Your father and I understood each other.”
I felt something harden behind my ribs.
“Then you know better than to use him here.”
For the first time, Victor looked genuinely unsettled.
“That was not my intention.”
“What is your intention?”
He sat down opposite me.
“To prevent a regrettable personnel incident from destroying a valuable business.”
“Whose business?”
“There are two hundred and forty employees. Families. Pensions. Contracts.”
“I know the number.”
“Then you understand the stakes.”
“Yes. Do they?”
He frowned.
“The employees. Do they understand that if they report mistreatment, management may classify it as a threat to the business?”
“That is not fair.”
“Neither is telling me their families depend on my silence.”
Outside the room, someone laughed, then abruptly stopped. I wondered how far the story had traveled through the building already. I wondered which version was winning.
Victor folded his hands.
“Claire will be suspended pending review.”
“That is a management decision. I am asking about management.”
“You cannot reasonably expect us to restructure the organization over one morning.”
“Then stop telling me it is one morning before you have checked.”
He looked at me for a long time.
When he spoke again, the warmth had disappeared.
“Your father wanted this acquisition.”
“My father wanted a company worth acquiring.”
The words left us both silent.
I had not intended to make grief into a weapon. I heard his name in the room and wanted him back badly enough to become cruel with what remained. I looked down at my hands, waited until they stopped shaking, then asked Victor to leave me alone for a few minutes.
He did.
Ana had slipped out earlier. Captain Mercer stood in the corridor, guarding nothing except the possibility that I might need privacy. When he saw me at the door, he straightened.
“May I ask you something?” I said.
“Anything.”
“Why did you not follow up on Four Seventeen?”
He looked older than he had on the steps.
“I should have.”
“That is not an answer either.”
He accepted the correction.
“I was told the complaint had been reviewed. I had not witnessed the boarding. I thought pressing the matter would mean accusing colleagues without evidence.”
“Did you speak to Ana?”
“No.”
He swallowed.
“I told myself the responsible people had handled it.”
“And now?”
“Now I think I used the word responsible to mean senior.”
That answer I believed.
He reached into his jacket and took out a folded envelope.
“I brought this today. I intended to give it to you after the signing.”
My name was written on the front in his careful block letters.
“What is it?”
“A copy of something your father sent me. You should have it whether the transaction happens or not.”
Inside was a printed email dated three weeks before my father’s final hospital admission. Mercer had asked whether the proposed acquisition meant cabin crew would face layoffs. My father had answered that he could not promise every role would stay identical, but that he wanted an airline where employees could tell the truth before a mistake became a disaster.
At the bottom, he had added one sentence.
If Monica ever stops asking uncomfortable questions, please remind her whose daughter she is.
I sat down on the corridor bench.
Mercer moved away without being asked.
For the first time that morning, I cried.
Not elegantly. Not as a powerful woman processing an unfortunate interruption. I cried as a daughter who had been waiting for her father to tell her what to do and had just found out he had expected her to know.
Julian found me there ten minutes later. He sat beside me, leaving enough space for dignity and not enough for loneliness.
“Evelyn agreed to speak,” he said.
I wiped my face.
“Now?”
“If you are ready.”
“Does she know who I am?”
