The remark was not unkind, but Daniel felt it. He had grown wealthy enough that ordinary bills no longer shaped his days, and it had become possible to speak about time as though everyone possessed the same amount of it. He asked Rory to connect Therese with a separate employment attorney so she could decide what she wanted without depending on Daniel's case. Therese thanked him for the referral while making it clear that she would not trade her evidence for a promise of a promotion.
They spent the afternoon reviewing a timeline. At 8:51 Tuesday, Daniel's credential was accepted. At 8:52, Benjamin entered the manual denial. At 8:54, Therese preserved the recording, and at 8:57 the board chair arrived to confirm Daniel's status. The more they arranged the events in order, the less plausible Warren's story of a security emergency became.
"He was told repeatedly to verify the badge," Daniel said. "He had the power to check and the power to stop. He chose neither."
"And Silas claims he personally witnessed fraud before arriving in the lobby," Rory replied. "We need to be able to establish where he was, exactly, and what his affidavit says he saw."
The affidavit had been written in a way that allowed a careless reader to confuse knowledge acquired later with direct observation. It described Silas as present in the building during the incident, which was true, then used phrasing that implied he had observed the credential verification firsthand, which he had not. Rory marked each statement that needed verification and prepared a request for the court to require the original access record, the synchronized lobby video, and the relevant appointment calendar. She refused to assume that exposing Warren's prejudice would be sufficient to win a dispute about corporate ownership.
Another complication concerned the visitor profile. The spreadsheet Silas supplied could be authentic, incomplete, altered, or only one version of a larger system; an independent specialist would need to establish its origin and changes. Rory therefore prepared a preservation request directed at the company's technology custodians, including archived configurations and access histories. The process was less dramatic than a secret flash drive appearing in court, but it mattered more to the integrity of the case.
Therese opened her notebook to a page she had nearly forgotten. It described a woman named Teresa Delgado, who represented a small industrial safety supplier. Delgado had driven almost two hours for a meeting only to be told she was not on the approved list, although she carried the invitation on her phone. After forty minutes she had called Therese from the lobby and asked, quietly, whether she had done something wrong.
"I told her the meeting had been canceled," Therese admitted. "It wasn't canceled. The flag told security not to send her upstairs, and I couldn't bear to tell her that."
"You were trying to spare her the humiliation," Daniel said.
"Maybe. Or I was trying to spare myself the trouble of confronting it. I have to be honest about that part, too."
Daniel appreciated the distinction. He had walked into Summit hoping to learn how its leaders treated a stranger, and Therese's honesty was showing him something more complicated than villains and heroes. People had survived beneath Warren's system by choosing which battles they could afford, and every choice had consequences for someone else. If Daniel wanted a different company, he would have to make truth-telling safer than obedience without pretending that past choices had not mattered.