Todd’s smile weakened.
Then the Prescott table erupted.
Bradley’s cousin Derek clapped.
Craig Bellamy, Bradley’s brother-in-law and Titan Atlanta’s vice president of human resources, stood and cheered.
Neil Simmons, head of facility security and Bradley’s longtime friend, slapped the table.
Several Prescott relatives joined them.
Fourteen people making enough noise to pretend three hundred agreed.
Aaron looked at Todd.
The young man had already known.
Of course he had.
Maybe for weeks.
Perhaps the new business cards were already printed.
Aaron looked back at Bradley.
“You nominated me for Employee of the Year so you could do this publicly?”
Bradley’s smile widened.
“No.”
“Your coworkers nominated you.”
That made the humiliation worse.
Bradley leaned toward the microphone.
“I just thought the evening deserved some entertainment.”
Someone whispered:
“Jesus.”
Aaron heard it.
So did Bradley.
Bradley did not care.
Aaron looked down at the two pieces of his certificate.
Then slowly straightened his jacket.
“I gave this company twelve years.”
Bradley lifted the bourbon glass.
“And I’m giving you thirty seconds to leave my ballroom.”
Aaron looked at him.
“My nephew starts Monday.”
Bradley took a drink.
“Your desk is his.”
Aaron did not know yet that before sunrise Bradley Prescott would leave three increasingly desperate voicemails begging for a conversation.
He did not know the Atlanta branch’s executive access systems would be frozen before midnight.
He did not know an outside forensic team would enter Titan Freight’s servers before breakfast.
And Bradley Prescott had no idea that the man he had just fired in front of three hundred people controlled sixty-one percent of Titan Freight Corporation’s voting shares.
That story had begun twelve years earlier.
But Aaron’s morning had begun with pancakes.
At 6:14 a.m., Aaron stood barefoot in the kitchen of the modest brick house he and Layla shared in East Atlanta.
One pancake was burning.
Another was raw in the middle.
Layla sat at the table wearing her school uniform and braiding the loose end of one of her own braids while watching him fail.
“Daddy.”
“Yes?”
“It smells bad.”
“That is called caramelization.”
“That is called burned.”
Aaron looked at the pan.
“Everybody’s a critic.”
Layla giggled.
She was eight years old and had inherited her mother’s smile.
That still surprised Aaron sometimes.
Natalie had been gone five years.
Breast cancer.
Twenty-nine months from diagnosis to funeral.
Some mornings, Aaron could remember her without pain.
Other mornings, Layla would tilt her head in exactly the same way Natalie used to and grief would arrive without knocking.
Aaron placed a less-burned pancake on his daughter’s plate.
Layla inspected it suspiciously.
“Is this one safe?”
“Eat your breakfast.”
She poured syrup over it.
Then looked at the navy suit hanging from the pantry door.
“You’re wearing your fancy clothes tonight.”
“Apparently.”
“For the award?”
“Maybe.”
Layla’s eyes widened.
“You’re getting it.”
“I’m nominated.”
“That means getting it.”
“That is absolutely not what nominated means.”
“It means they picked you.”
“It means they might pick me.”
Layla stabbed the pancake with her fork.
“They should.”
Aaron smiled.
“Thank you.”
“You work harder than everybody.”
“You have not met everybody.”
“I met Mr. Kevin.”
“That is one person.”
“He said you fixed Christmas.”
Aaron laughed.
Last December, a routing-system outage at Titan Freight’s Southeast network had stranded hundreds of retail shipments five days before Christmas.
Aaron spent thirty-one hours over two days rebuilding dispatch logic manually with a small team.
Kevin, one of the dispatch supervisors, had told Layla at the company picnic that her father saved Christmas.
Layla had believed him literally.
“You going to put the trophy in the kitchen?”
“If I win.”
“Over there.”
She pointed to the narrow wall near the refrigerator.
“Then I can see it when I eat cereal.”
Aaron looked at the wall.
“Deal.”
He packed her lunch.
Turkey sandwich.