"Take them," she snapped. "Take your stupid company."
"The company was never yours to take," Ellen replied. "And that car was never personal property."
Shenine looked at Jamal one last time. "Tell them this is a mistake. You know me."
He took a slow breath. "I thought I did."
Security escorted her from the board floor. No one applauded. Maya watched the doors close and felt a strange emptiness where she had expected triumph. The woman who had hurt her was leaving, but Maya still had to decide whether she could work again in a building where so many people had watched and said nothing.
When the doors shut, Ellen looked at the board. "Now we discuss the chief executive."
Jamal remained in his seat while Margaret presented the committee's findings about management oversight. There were no dramatic images on the screen this time, only decisions he recognized as his own. He had ordered Maya to apologize without asking witnesses what happened. He had authorized disciplinary action after Shenine struck her. He had terminated Maya based on an unauthenticated email, then attempted to suspend her access after the independent committee reinstated her.
He watched the dates appear beside each decision. They looked ordinary when reduced to lines in a report. That was what troubled him. There was no single terrible afternoon he could isolate and blame on anger. There was a series of opportunities to ask one more question, hear one more employee, or review one more record, and he had refused them all because he believed the person nearest him was the person most deserving of belief.
"Mr. Hail," Margaret said, "the committee recognizes your contribution to the company's product development and recent growth. It also finds that your personal relationship with the brand director affected personnel decisions and financial oversight. You created conditions in which retaliation could continue after employees raised complaints. Do you disagree?"
Jamal looked at Maya. Her face was tired, but she met his eyes directly. He remembered the photograph of his grandmother beside the old kitchen table and the smile of the nine-year-old boy who believed he could fix anything. He had spent years building an image of leadership around the idea that he never made a mistake. Now he understood the cost of that image.
"I don't disagree," he said. "I gave Shenine authority she hadn't earned. I assumed employees with less power were less reliable witnesses. And I treated criticism as disrespect."
A director asked why he had ignored the staff who told him otherwise. Jamal answered slowly. "Because admitting they might be right would mean admitting I was wrong. I chose the easier thing. I defended myself by defending her."
Ellen watched him from the head of the table. Part of her wanted to reach across, take his hand, and tell him he could still become a good man. Another part knew that comforting him before the consequences were decided would repeat the very failure the company had spent a week exposing. She folded her hands in her lap and waited.