Isaiah looked around the table once more. "This is a valuable institution," he said. "It has real expertise, dedicated employees, and customers who rely on the services behind its reputation. We're going to protect those strengths, remove the incentives that have damaged them, and promote people for the work they can demonstrate rather than the family names they carry."
He stood and walked to the windows overlooking the financial district. The city stretched beneath him in a grid of roofs and streets, the same city where his mother had once stepped off a night bus carrying a bag of cleaning supplies. He felt no triumphant relief from Charles's exit, only the sober understanding that buying a building gave a man the right to direct its future but not the wisdom to do so well. That would have to be earned through decisions made after the cameras, the meetings, and the celebration were over.
"Let's get to work," he said, turning back to the board.
Charles rode down in the executive elevator with a human resources director on one side and a security manager on the other. Neither man spoke unless he addressed them, and their restraint irritated him more than a lecture would have done. He had imagined being dismissed from a company as a scene of public humiliation, yet almost no one in the building knew what had happened upstairs. Employees continued answering phones, crossing the lobby with files, and waiting for elevators as though Charles Kensington had not just lost the position he believed defined him.
His office was on the thirty-ninth floor, a large room with a view of the river and framed photographs of private events attended by people whose names appeared regularly in financial news. The human resources director asked which items he wanted to take immediately and explained that his electronic access had been disabled under the board's direction. Charles removed a silver pen from his desk, a photograph of Eleanor taken twenty years earlier, and a small sculpture his father had given him when he became a division head. He left behind the photographs of galas because he could no longer bear to look at them.
The security manager waited near the door while Charles stood by the window. Below him, delivery trucks stopped and started, pedestrians crossed streets without looking up, and taxis fought for space among vehicles whose drivers had never heard of Meridian Capital Group. Charles understood intellectually that the company would survive his departure, but the visual proof felt like a personal insult. He had been so certain everyone depended on his presence that he had never considered how much of the business might continue without noticing his absence.
When he reached the street, several photographers were waiting for a financial conference being held in the neighboring building. One recognized Charles and asked whether he was pleased with the acquisition. Charles looked toward the camera, momentarily tempted to deliver a furious statement about being wronged by a secretive buyer. Then he remembered the unfinished forensic audit, the missing disclosures, and the advice his lawyer had given him in the night.