Grayson didn’t look at her. He looked at me. “Is it unverifiable?”
I pulled my cracked phone from my pocket, pulled up the emergency log, and showed them the blurry photo the boy’s frantic mother had texted me ten minutes ago. You saved my son. Please tell me your name so he can thank you when he stops shaking. The silence in the office was heavy.
Then Grayson sat down, steepling his fingers. “Why do you want to work here, Nora?”
I didn’t give the polished, MBA-approved answer. I was too tired, too cold, and too angry for corporate theater. I told him about Milo. I told him about working grueling twelve-hour night shifts at a grocery distribution warehouse while studying logistics online. And I told him about the day I was fired.
“I was terminated for refusing to falsify temperature logs that hid massive safety violations,” I said flatly.
Cassandra’s fake smile vanished. “You were fired for whistleblowing?”
“No,” I corrected her. “I was fired for insubordination. That’s the official paperwork.”
Grayson reached out and opened my damp, muddy folder. He didn’t look at my resume. He pulled out the forty-page operations proposal I had written. It detailed how Pierce Meridian could restructure its recent acquisitions to stop middle managers from hiding safety hazards behind manipulated data.
“Interesting,” Grayson murmured, his eyes scanning a hand-drawn flow chart. He looked up, his gaze piercing. “The warehouse you reported last year… it was Northstar Fulfillment, wasn’t it?”
My stomach dropped. Cassandra stood up abruptly, her chair scraping against the hardwood.
“Grayson, the Northstar acquisition is strictly confidential! She shouldn’t know—”
“She used to work there, Cassandra,” Grayson said coldly. He turned to me. “We bought Northstar quietly last month. And according to your file here, you seem to possess the only honest map of the rot inside my new property.”
I took a shaky breath. But before I could speak, a horrifying realization hit me. I lunged forward, pressing a muddy finger against page twelve of my report.
“Mr. Pierce, what time is it?” I demanded, all pretense of formality gone.
Grayson frowned, glancing at his watch. “It’s 9:40 a.m. Why?”