Marcus glanced at Daniel. "It was. The field team flagged it in testing."
"Do we have documentation?"
"I can show you the tickets," Marcus said. "They were marked resolved. The wording said 'working as configured.'"
Daniel noticed a slight tightening in the faces around the table. He did not interrupt. An organization sometimes revealed its priorities in the phrases it used to make inconvenient information disappear.
Victoria called him to her office afterward. She had the verified report open beside a stack of board correspondence. For the first time since his appointment, she looked genuinely pleased.
"Thirty-one percent," she said. "That's substantial."
"It's a promising pilot. We need more time to know how much of it holds."
"You could accept a compliment."
"I did. I just don't want the next team punished if the figures normalize."
Victoria smiled faintly. "I see why Marcus trusts you."
"He trusts the process we're building. That's better than trusting me personally. If I leave tomorrow, the improvement should survive."
She looked down at the report again. "The board wants these results rolled out everywhere."
"Then the board needs to fund training and give the facilities time to learn. The quickest way to ruin this is to announce we're done before we know what changed."
Victoria regarded him with something between admiration and irritation. He was proving useful in precisely the way she had hoped, but he had none of the instinctive deference that usually came with a senior appointment. Her father's executives had spent years mastering the art of agreeing before a question was finished. Daniel seemed almost physically incapable of doing that.
As he stood to leave, she slid another report toward him. The cover carried three signatures and a request for an executive review of his decisions. The language was formal, but the accusation was clear: Daniel Carter was exceeding his authority, compromising approved vendor relationships, and making untested changes to regional operations.
"You've made someone angry," Victoria said.
Daniel read the names. The same one appeared on every page: Richard Vail. Former chief operating officer, now executive vice president for strategic partnerships, and the man most employees had expected to succeed Victoria's father.
"Why does he want me gone?" Daniel asked.
Victoria's expression changed. "Because you're fixing problems he's spent three years explaining away." Daniel considered that, then looked back at the complaint. "You don't know whether he caused those problems intentionally."
"No."
"Then don't treat him as guilty because we dislike his reaction. Show me the transactions and the actual vendor decisions."
She gave him a long look. "You think that's what I'm trying to do?"
"I think you're trying to understand what happened. We need to be careful that trying doesn't become assuming."