“Never sign something angry, Clara,” he had told me, tapping the barrel against the grain of the oak table. “And never reveal power until it has a purpose. People who shout are usually empty inside. People who hold the ledgers never need to raise their voices.”
“We aren’t shutting down anything, Nina,” I said, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the sprawling grey concrete of our loading docks below, where long-haul trucks were beginning to line up for the afternoon shift. “The trucks need to move. The payroll needs to clear by Friday. The only thing changing around here is the waste at the top.”
I turned around, facing the row of empty glass-walled offices where Martin and his consulting cronies had spent six months rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.
“Call the warehouse supervisor,” I instructed, my voice cutting cleanly through the quiet hum of the air conditioning. “Tell him to come upstairs.”
