William turned toward Nathan. "Do you understand what you asked this employee to do?"
"I asked her to do her job," Nathan snapped.
Alicia set down her pen. "You should be careful with that answer. It may be material to the investigation."
Nathan's expression changed. He had known Alicia for years and expected her to defend the company through whatever interpretation helped management. Hearing her separate the company's interests from his personal defense unsettled him. He reached for a glass of water and found that his hand was trembling slightly.
James slid a printed timeline across the table. "We also have passenger footage," he said.
"One of the recordings begins before the officers arrive, and another captures Mr. Caldwell in the galley. We have not independently authenticated every clip. We will not represent them as conclusive until the originals are examined. But they make certain accounts difficult to reconcile."
On the screen, the first video showed Ethan sitting in 2A, raising his boarding pass as Clare spoke. The audio captured her describing a seating adjustment, Richard insisting he always used the front window seat, and Ethan asking for a genuine reason. Then it showed Clare calling security. No shouting. No threats. No conduct resembling the disturbance recorded in the gate system.
A second recording, captured through an open curtain while Daniel repositioned his phone, was less clear. Nathan's voice could be heard telling Clare to "resolve it" and then saying something that sounded like "find a reason." James paused the clip and explained that the audio alone was not perfectly clear. Clare looked at Nathan and confirmed that those were the words she had heard in the galley.
"This is a selective account," Nathan said. "You have videos from angry passengers trying to make us look bad."
"Several of the passengers were not angry until they watched what happened," Susan replied. "And you haven't identified anything in the footage that is false."
Nathan lifted his chin. "What do you want from me? A confession that I hate everyone who doesn't look like me? That's absurd."
Ethan rested his hands on the table. "Not every unpleasant interaction is discrimination. You're right about that. We look at evidence, patterns, choices, and whether policies were applied consistently. But a company does not become free of bias because its executives refuse to say the word."
The room was silent again. Ethan continued without raising his voice. "You didn't ask Richard Hayes to verify that he belonged in first class. You didn't threaten to classify his refusal as interference when he resisted returning to 4C. You treated his expectation as a claim with authority and my valid purchase as an obstacle. You need to explain why."
Nathan opened his mouth and closed it. For the first time since the meeting began, he had no operational phrase left that did not sound like an evasion. William watched him and remembered every quarterly presentation in which Nathan had reported reduced complaint-resolution times without explaining how those complaints were resolved.
A folder closed. A customer moved. A refund offered. A record marked completed.