William gave the instruction. The attorney left to correct the public statement through formal approval, and a second notice went to all relevant staff advising them that records were subject to preservation. In the hallway outside, employees watched the emergency meeting continue behind glass and wondered whether the company was changing or merely frightened. Inside the boardroom, Ethan knew the answer would depend on what happened after the cameras turned away.
At four thirty, while the board prepared for an emergency session, Ethan asked for fifteen minutes alone. He had spent nearly the entire day inside spaces controlled by other people: the aircraft, the gate, the executive elevator, the boardroom. He wanted a small room with a door he could close and a glass of water he did not have to request from someone whose employment depended on what he might say. Allison arranged a conference room on the floor below and left him there without questions.
Ethan loosened his tie and sat beside the window. The runway lights were beginning to appear in the late afternoon haze. Far below, ground vehicles crossed service roads while aircraft lined up for departure, one after another, each carrying people who assumed their journey would be ordinary. He thought about Marilyn asking whether he was standing tall, and the question suddenly made him angry, not at her but at a world where standing tall in the face of mistreatment could become a lifelong occupation.
He called Maya. "Tell me what the employees are hearing," he said.
"Rumors," she answered. "Some say the money is gone. Some say two thousand people will be fired tomorrow. Somebody has claimed you demanded that Northstar shut its operations down until you get a personal apology. We've corrected what we can, but the workforce is frightened."
Ethan leaned forward. "We need a message that the designated funds already released remain available under their restrictions. And we need the board to confirm that essential maintenance and payroll continue while we review the other tranches."
"James is drafting it," Maya said. "But there's another question. Why Northstar? Why keep trying with a company whose leadership just showed you how it operates? We have other investments to make."
Ethan looked at his mother's uncashed check in his memory, then at the wingtip of a jet disappearing behind a building. "Because if we walk away too quickly, the people most likely to pay aren't Nathan Caldwell and Richard Hayes," he said. "They're mechanics, reservation agents, cleaners, dispatchers, crew members, and the families waiting for those paychecks. I won't make them collateral damage to prove I have power."
"And if the board refuses to change?"
"Then we walk. We don't save an institution by giving it permission to continue harming people."
Maya was silent for a moment. "You sound like Marilyn."
"She's been working on me for forty-four years. It's hard to escape the training."