Preston's interviews were less productive. He insisted that his strategy work had been essential and that senior executives often used outside advisers whose contributions were difficult to quantify. When asked to identify the people who performed the work, he named several individuals who later said they had never been employed by Hale Strategy Group. Counsel advised him not to answer certain questions without reviewing the documents, a right he was entitled to exercise even though Imani found his earlier confidence in the expenses difficult to reconcile with his new uncertainty.
The corporate records eventually revealed that Hale Strategy Group was controlled through a holding arrangement connected to Preston's family interests. That connection had not been disclosed in the form Sterling Vane required for related-party vendors. The audit also found that payments had been routed through approval paths in which Garrett's sign-off was effectively the only financial check on Preston's requests. Independent counsel referred the findings to the appropriate outside authorities for consideration while the company pursued recovery of disputed funds.
Imani read the report in her office, stopping where it described employees who had raised questions and then been told to mind their own responsibilities. She thought about Maya asking who controlled meeting-room records and how carefully the younger woman had explained the limits of what she knew. A single honest observation had not proved the entire scheme, but it had helped investigators see why the financial documents and the daily operating records failed to agree. That was what the company had been missing: people trusted to describe what was actually in front of them.
Preston was terminated after the board completed its employment review, separate from the ongoing legal proceedings. The decision cited the undisclosed conflict of interest, repeated failures to substantiate consulting charges, misuse of approval authority, retaliation against an employee, and conduct inconsistent with his obligations as a senior executive. The company did not announce that he had been convicted of anything, because no court had made such a finding. It announced that its own internal standards had been violated and that the relevant records had been provided for independent review.
He responded through an attorney, accusing Sterling Vane of unfair treatment and disputing several findings. For a time, newspapers treated the case as a dispute between a removed executive and a powerful new owner. But the documentary record, including the appointment calendar, the original employment dismissal, the transaction histories, and the videos Preston had encouraged employees to post, made it difficult to reduce the story to a disagreement about personality. Each piece showed a decision made at a time when Preston believed he would not have to explain it.
Sienna's situation ended differently. Her employment review found that she had repeatedly used workplace access to film visitors without authorization and had participated in humiliating conduct during both encounters with Imani. She received the chance to respond and acknowledged that the drink on the rooftop had not been a simple accident. Her employment ended after the investigation, and the company required her to stop using the recordings for promotional content without deleting material that had to be preserved for the legal record.