Chapter 3 — I Watched The Meeting. I Wrote Everything Down.
Wednesday's all-hands sales review was held in the large conference room on the fourth floor.
Ray knew this room well. He had designed the seating configuration himself, years ago — the long oval table, the dual screens at each end, the acoustic panels along the east wall that had taken four months to source correctly. The room had been built for honest performance reviews. For hard conversations. For the kind of transparency he had always believed a well-run company required.
He cleaned the glass wall from the outside at nine forty-five.
The meeting was already underway.
Bryce Callahan was presenting. He moved the way people moved when they had rehearsed a performance more than a process — smooth, fast, entirely committed to the energy of confidence rather than the accuracy of content.
Ray cleaned slowly.
He had made a decision early in his first week to treat this work with the same attention he had once brought to reading financial statements. Not to rush. Not to skim. To look at everything carefully and record what he actually saw.
What he saw, over fifteen minutes of presentation, were three specific problems.
The first was a conversion rate figure that was seventeen percent higher than what the actual closed contracts in the system could support. He had seen the contract log in a report during his recovery. The figures didn't align.
The second was an expense amortization method that wasn't consistent with the accounting treatment the company had used for eight years. It was a choice. A choice that made the quarterly performance look cleaner than it was.
The third was a commission disbursement line — substantial — with no visible contract, client reference, or authorization attached anywhere in the slide deck.
Derek Sloane sat at the head of the table.
He nodded throughout.
At one point, he said: "Strong quarter, Bryce. This is exactly the trajectory we need."
Ray wrote down the third number. He was on page eighteen of his notebook.
He cleaned the last section of glass and moved his cart toward the corridor.
As he passed the door, he heard a junior analyst ask a question about the commission line. He couldn't hear the full exchange. He heard Bryce's voice — smooth, dismissive — and then the sound of the meeting moving on.
He wrote four words in his notebook: Question asked. No answer.
That evening, he sent a short encrypted message to Margaret Voss, the longest-serving member of the board, a woman who had known him since before the company existed.
I need six weeks. Don't let them touch the voting structure.
Her reply came in eleven minutes.
Understood.
He put the phone away.
He had four weeks left.