The name Diana Mitchell had been circling around in her brain like a word on the tip of her tongue that she couldn’t quite remember. “I need you to conference with the entire board,” Diana had continued into her phone. “Yes, all of them. This can’t wait until Monday.” Other customers had been recording everything on their phones by then. The Blackstones had moved closer, clearly fascinated by the drama unfolding in front of them.
Ashley had been showing Kevin something on her phone, and Kevin’s face had kept getting paler and paler. “There’s been a serious violation of company policy,” Diana had said into her phone, her eyes never leaving Patricia’s face. “Discrimination, harassment, complete abandonment of our core values.” Each word had hit Patricia like a physical blow. Company policy, core values. Who had this woman been and why had she been talking like she had authority over store policies?
“I’ll hold while you get everyone on the line,” Diana had said, then had lowered her phone and looked directly at Patricia. The store had been so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. Customers, employees, everyone had been frozen, waiting to see what would happen next. Even the classical music had seemed to have stopped, though that might have just been because everyone had been holding their breath.
Diana had stood there with her phone in her hand, looking at Patricia with an expression that had been part disappointment, part rage, and part something else. Something that had looked almost like sadness. The sadness of someone who had built something beautiful, only to watch it be destroyed by the very people she had trusted to protect it.
Patricia had finally found her voice, though it had come out as barely a whisper. “Who? Who are you calling?” Diana’s smile had been sharp as a blade. “I told you, my board of directors, the people who make decisions about stores like this one, the people who decide who stays and who goes.” And that’s when Patricia Wittmann had finally realized that she had made the biggest mistake of her life.
The name Diana Mitchell hadn’t just been familiar. It had been the name on every company memo, every policy document, every paycheck she had received for the past eight months. Diana Mitchell hadn’t been just some customer who had wandered into the store. Diana Mitchell had been the founder, the CEO, the woman who had built Luminous Designs from nothing, and who had owned every single store in the company.
The woman Patricia had discriminated against, dismissed, and tried to have removed from the store hadn’t been just any customer. She had been the customer, the one customer in the world who had the power to end Patricia’s career with a single phone call. And Patricia had just given her every reason to do exactly that.
“Oh my God,” Ashley gasped, her voice rising with each word as the reality of the situation had hit her like a freight train. Kevin Torres had looked at Ashley’s phone screen and had seen the company newsletter photo that every Luminous Designs employee received monthly. There had been Diana Mitchell smiling from the front page under the headline CEO Spotlight: Building Dreams One Store at a Time.