PART 8 — His Plan for Interim CEO Was Already Waiting in a Slide Deck
The slide deck had never reached the full board. Pike’s files showed it was a draft, and the committee had to establish whether Grant intended to use it. Grant’s messages supplied context. After Nina refused the account request, he told Pike he would “move to the contingency route” if I resisted signing.
Rosa recommended immediate restrictions on any use of my health information and a formal notice to Pike’s firm preserving its records. She also engaged outside counsel for the company. I gave a statement about Dad’s surgery and my leave at the time. Personnel records showed the board had approved it. My work evaluations remained strong before and after.
I had once told Grant how guilty I felt leaving the plant during Dad’s treatment. He had held my hand and said I was allowed to be a daughter. Reading his slides, I remembered that kindness. The fact that it had been real then made his later use of the same memory harder to fit into a simple story.
Camille interviewed Grant with his lawyer present. He admitted speaking to Northline and said the four-million-dollar fee reflected his expected work after a sale. He denied forging my signature. When shown the file history, he said Sloane must have misunderstood instructions to prepare a sample authorization. Sloane’s messages contradicted him, but he did not change his account.
He also said the contingency deck was meant to address genuine concerns. Camille asked him to identify a doctor who had raised those concerns. He could not. He pointed instead to my approved leave and several late meetings I missed while managing Dad’s estate. The committee would have to judge his conduct from records and witnesses, not his certainty.
Northline withdrew its interest after Rosa disputed Grant’s authority and the accuracy of his projections. Its counsel agreed in writing to destroy the customer list and certify who had seen it. That stopped the proposed sale, but it did not repair the trust Grant had damaged with employees, clients, or my family.
Nina suggested I take a weekend away from the office. I went instead to the smaller plant’s Saturday open house, an event Dad used to attend every year. Workers brought children to see the machines from behind marked safety lines. Tessa handed me a paper cup of coffee and let me stand beside her without making conversation.
A little boy asked his mother whether the boxes came out already folded. She showed him the line, and he followed each sheet with serious attention. I thought about the closure projections on Grant’s spreadsheet. He had never included the people who knew how to keep that line running. Numbers mattered; his selected numbers had hidden them.
When I returned to Dad’s house, a letter from Grant waited under the front door. He apologized for the affair and said he had become afraid of losing his place beside me at the company. He wrote that Sloane made him feel admired when I had little time for him. The letter did not mention the forged signature.
I called his lawyer and asked that future letters go through Rosa. Then I sat with the pages in my lap for a long time. I knew I had been absorbed by grief and work. Grant had been lonely in our marriage. Those truths deserved a conversation, but they did not explain billing the company for an apartment or preparing to question my health.
Evelyn called on Sunday. Grant had asked her to speak at the committee meeting in his support. She told him she would describe only what she knew: the statement he wanted her to sign and the day of the original authorization. He had hung up. She asked me if telling the truth would mean losing him.
“I don’t know,” I said. I would not promise her an easy repair. She said she might lose him by lying, too. We stayed on the phone while she watered the plants by her kitchen window. Neither of us had a useful way to make the coming week less painful.
On Monday, Owen produced the final payment analysis. Of the ninety-six thousand dollars paid to Elm Harbor, a portion covered Pike’s work and the apartment; the rest remained with Elm Harbor as fees. Grant had approved all three invoices and falsely described the reports as research for an active client proposal. There was no such proposal.
The committee scheduled a final interview with Grant, then a recommendation to the board. I prepared for a separate discussion about company controls, customer confidence, and staffing. Nina said I did not need to attend his interview. I agreed. I wanted a fair process more than I wanted to watch him confronted.
Before the interview, Sloane requested a meeting with Rosa. She provided a second message chain that she said she had been afraid to share. In it, Grant instructed her to call me “unsteady” if anyone asked about the morning in the lobby. He said the spilled drink would make my arrival look chaotic.
The message was sent before I entered the building. It did not prove he had ordered Sloane to spill the matcha. It did show he had anticipated using whatever happened that morning against me. Sloane had replied with a single word: Okay. For the first time, I stopped trying to decide which of them had tipped the cup.
END PART 8
