In February, the board completed its first major personnel decisions. Grant Worthington was removed from active leadership and later separated from Blackridge following the independent review. The company reserved its rights under the employment agreement concerning disputed severance and other financial matters. The announcement did not accuse him of criminal conduct, because the investigation into potential violations belonged to the appropriate authorities and legal processes, not to an internal press release.
Preston Caldwell was terminated for cause after the forensic accountants concluded that the certificate valuation and payroll mapping had been deliberately maintained despite warnings. His own correspondence showed he understood the risks and had chosen to proceed rather than challenge the instruction effectively. He retained counsel and disputed portions of the board's findings, but the company no longer allowed him access to its financial reporting systems. He had spent years using the language of precision; in the end, his records were what made the board's decision difficult to challenge.
Dana Whitmore remained employed but was removed from the executive leadership group. The board concluded that she had recognized the risk and documented it, yet failed to carry her concerns to the independent directors when management refused to act. Dana accepted a lower-level HR role with less pay and a requirement to complete independent compliance training. She could have resigned in anger, but she chose to stay long enough to help repair the process she had failed to protect.
The demotion was harder for her than she expected. For two weeks she avoided the calibration floor, convinced everyone would see her as a coward who had tried to keep her job at their expense. When she finally approached Evan, he was meeting with counsel about his reinstatement and had little reason to make the conversation comfortable.
"I should have said something in that room," she told him. "Not after the auditors came. On December twenty-second. I saw the dates, and I let Preston answer for me."
Evan looked at her. "You could have made a difference."
"I know."
"I'm not interested in pretending you didn't have a choice."
"Neither am I," Dana said. "I want to do better the next time there is one."
He nodded. It was not forgiveness in the easy sense, and neither of them tried to make it into a sentimental reunion. It was a useful beginning: two adults agreeing on what had happened without softening the part each was responsible for.
In the same month, state wage officials opened a formal review of the compensation practices. The company cooperated and later reached a resolution involving corrected wage payments, applicable interest, and civil penalties under the provisions relevant to the established facts. The independent reviewers recommended that payroll authorization be separated from promotional expense approvals and that any nonstandard payment proposal receive documented review before workers were notified. Those changes sounded technical on paper, but Evan knew exactly what they were meant to prevent.
The board retained a former manufacturing executive, Lena Ortiz, to become chief executive in March. She had spent nine years directing operations at a competitor and had a reputation for asking engineers to explain what machines were actually doing before promising customers what those machines might do next quarter. She accepted the role on the condition that the company provide full access to the audit findings and fund the control repairs the directors had been postponing.