That night, Elijah slept in Naomi's bed for the first time in nearly two years.
At 2:13 in the morning, he woke crying.
He had dreamed Rebecca was dragging him down an aisle that never ended.
Naomi held him until he fell asleep again.
At 5:40, she gave up on sleep, made coffee, and opened the secure investigation portal on her laptop.
The outside review team had already begun preserving records.
Rebecca Morrison's personnel file was thicker than Naomi remembered.
Not because the facts had changed overnight, but because preserved attachments were now being restored from archived systems. Email chains. Supervisor notes. Scheduling records. Complaint summaries. Training completion certificates.
The pattern was not clean enough to fit into a headline.
That made it more believable.
Some complaints were vague. A passenger said Rebecca was rude during a delay. Another said she seemed impatient. One involved a seat assignment dispute in which operational records suggested Rebecca had followed policy correctly, though her tone had been described as humiliating.
But several were specific.
Janet Williams had been traveling to see her dying mother. A connection delay left her emotionally raw. Rebecca moved her from a premium seat because of an equipment change, then moved her twice more after other passengers complained. When Janet protested, Rebecca labeled her disruptive. Janet chose to leave the aircraft rather than continue the flight.
She missed the hospital window by less than an hour.
Her mother died before she arrived.
The complaint had been closed as an operational seating issue.
Another file involved a twelve-year-old Black boy named Marcus Thompson, traveling with his father. Rebecca accused him of taking a pair of headphones from a business-class passenger. She insisted his backpack be opened in front of nearby passengers.
The headphones were later found in the seat pocket where the passenger had left them.
Rebecca apologized for the inconvenience.
The complaint was closed after Dennis Morrison wrote that no discriminatory intent could be established.
A third complaint came from Dr. James Carter, a cardiac surgeon who had been seated in business class. Rebecca asked him twice whether he was sure he was in the correct cabin. When another flight attendant confirmed his boarding pass, Rebecca reportedly said she was only protecting the premium experience for legitimate business travelers.
Dennis closed the complaint as a misunderstanding.
Naomi opened a spreadsheet showing closure rates.
Rebecca's complaints had a substantiation rate of zero.
Comparable senior flight attendants averaged twelve percent.
The difference was statistically unusual.
Then there was the complaint Naomi herself had filed seven years earlier.
She had been a vice president by then, though not yet COO. She was deadheading from Boston to Miami after a three-day operational review.
Rebecca had spilled coffee while reaching across her row.
Naomi asked for napkins.
Rebecca replied, "If business class makes you this demanding, maybe coach would be more comfortable."
When Naomi asked what she meant, Rebecca called her uppity.
Naomi had filed a formal complaint.
A customer relations manager offered five thousand frequent-flyer miles and apologized for the service issue.
At the time, Naomi had accepted.
She had been tired.
She had also believed she could solve the larger problem later from a position of greater authority.
Now, looking at Elijah sleeping upstairs, she felt ashamed of that compromise.
Not because she had caused what happened to him.
She knew better than to adopt responsibility for Rebecca's behavior.
But power changed what she owed the system once she had it.
At 7:15, Richard Carter called.
"You awake?"
"I was never asleep."
"Same."
He sounded exhausted.
"The board wants an emergency meeting at nine."
"I'll join remotely. I'm not leaving Elijah today."
"Good. Also, communications drafted a statement. I hate it."