Chapter 14: The Board Call
Victoria closed her notes app with the morning fully documented: Sandra's exact words in the 21st-floor restroom, Richard's errand list, the promotion pattern Tam had whispered over coffee, the server floor, the complaint buried in HR. Her phone buzzed. Mark.
"Talk to me," she said.
"I have good news, bad news, and a third thing that is technically both," Mark said. "The old board's group chat is on fire. Ellen Cho has called me four times in the last hour."
"What does she want?" Victoria asked.
"Reassurance. A statement. A live human on camera telling the institutional holders that Pinnacle is not being strip-mined by a private equity firm with a catchy name."
"We are not private equity," Victoria said.
"I told her that. She asked me to tell her again, slower."
Victoria smiled despite herself. "Ellen will be fine. What else?"
"The price leaked," Mark said. "Not the number, but a range, and the range is ugly. Somebody at one of the banks talked. Two business blogs picked it up. The stock is wobbling on the rumor."
"Pinnacle is private," Victoria said. "What stock?"
"The holding company paper a few of the old directors sit on. Thinly traded, easy to spook. It dipped six percent on an hour of gossip."
"Six percent on gossip," Victoria said. "Tomorrow it rebounds on arithmetic."
"That is what I told Ellen Cho," Mark said. "She said she would like to hear it from you, in a voice that did not involve me."
Victoria glanced at the corridor clock: 1:42 PM. "She can have me at four o'clock, on the same screen as everyone else. I am not doing private previews for the old board. They sold the company. The boardroom portion of the program is over."
"Understood," Mark said. "Now the good news. The all-hands is set. Auditorium booked, overflow room on twelve, stream link tested. At two forty-seven, the email goes out company-wide with your photograph and the letter. I have read it twelve times. It is perfect."
"Which photo did you use?" Victoria asked.
"The one from the March panel. Black blazer, no smile, the one that says I have read your audit and found it wanting."
"That photo terrifies people," she said.
"It reassures the right people," he said. "Two forty-seven on the dot. Are we certain about the timing?"
"Forty-seven is precise enough to look deliberate," Victoria said. "Round numbers look like accidents, and accidents get dismissed."
"Poetry and logistics," Mark said. "Anything else before I go back to calming billionaires?"
"The old directors," Victoria said. "Tell Ellen she can have a call with me at five thirty, after the all-hands. Fifteen minutes. She can bring one question."
"One question," Mark repeated. "She will bring four."
"Then she will use her eleven minutes better next time," Victoria said.
He laughed. "You are enjoying this."
"I am not enjoying it," she said. "I am appreciating it. There is a difference."
"You said the same thing about the marathon in the rain."
"And I finished it," she said. "How is the building?"
"Quiet in a way that means loud later," Mark said. "Richard Keller has come by my desk twice looking for someone called maintenance. I told him facilities was doing rounds."
"He sent me to rearrange his office furniture," Victoria said.
"Did you?"
"I moved a chair six inches to the left and documented his exact sentences. Tell him the chair looks better. He will not know what to do with that."
Mark exhaled.
"Dana Whitfield has signed off on every packet," he said. "Counsel will be in the room for all of it."
"Good," Victoria said. "Due process is the whole point."
"Do I want to know the rest of your day?"
"You know the shape of it," she said. "I observe, I document, I say nothing until four."
"Four o'clock," he said. "All-hands. You'll handle it."
"I'll handle it," she said. "And Mark. When the email goes out at two forty-seven, do not call me. I want one hour where the building finds out on its own."
"One hour of dramatic irony," he said. "You are a showman."
"I am a founder," she said. "Get some lunch."
"I ate an hour ago. It was a granola bar. It was sad."
"Get a real lunch," she said. "Four o'clock is going to be a long evening."
"Yes, ma'am," he said, and the line went quiet.
Victoria slipped the phone back into her portfolio beside the black CEO badge with its silver lettering. The badge had waited all day. Two more hours, and it would not wait anymore. She checked her watch: 1:46 PM. Then she walked back toward the service corridor, where Dot Washington was finishing a floor she had been told, for twenty-two years, that she was lucky to have.