The last one, left Thursday night, was different.
“Maya.”
His voice was rough, barely controlled.
“I need to talk to you. Not about work. About everything. Please just call me back.”
I saved it, but didn’t respond.
Saturday, I spent the day at the office reviewing the preliminary performance assessments Marcus’s team had compiled. They were thorough, brutally objective, exactly what I’d asked for, and they confirmed what I’d already suspected.
Richard Sullivan’s evaluation was damning in its mediocrity.
31 years at the company, but minimal tangible contributions. No major process improvements, no cost-savings initiatives, no innovations in supply chain or operation strategy. He’d maintained existing systems competently but never pushed beyond them. His team respected him, but more out of familiarity than genuine leadership.
The assessment’s conclusion was clinical.
Mr. Sullivan represents institutional knowledge but limited strategic value in a modernized operational structure. Recommend transition to senior advisory role with reduced compensation or voluntary severance package.
Brandon’s was worse. Eight years, all of them under his father’s protective wing. Every promotion he’d received had come with notes about potential and development opportunity rather than actual performance. His current role could be absorbed by a competent senior manager. It didn’t require his position to exist.
Recommendation: Eliminate position during restructuring. Offer standard severance.
I closed the files and sat in the silence of my office. Outside, Seattle glittered in the twilight, unaware and uncaring about the small human dramas playing out in its towers.
I could protect them. One word from me and Marcus would adjust the assessments, find justifications to keep them on. I was the CEO. I had that power.
But I’d built NextTech on principles. Merit over connections. Innovation over tenure. Results over relationships.
Abandoning those principles now would undermine everything I’d created.
And for what? For people who’d never believed in me, who’d mocked and dismissed and diminished me at every opportunity.
The phone on my desk rang. Internal line.
“Sarah, your father is downstairs,” she said carefully. “Building security called. He’s asking to see you.”
I looked at the clock. 7:47 p.m. on a Saturday. He’d driven here from Belleview. Probably built up his courage for hours, maybe days.
I could send him away. I could make him wait until Monday, force him to go through official channels, submit a meeting request to my assistant like any other employee.
“Send him up,” I said.
Part 3
The elevator opened directly into NextTech’s executive floor, a security feature I’d insisted on during the building’s design.
My father stepped out, and I watched him take in the space through the glass walls of my office. The floor-to-ceiling windows. The custom furniture. The monitors displaying real-time data from operations across four continents.
He looked diminished here. His navy suit rumpled, his shoulders curved inward. I didn’t stand, didn’t rush to greet him. I stayed seated at my desk, my posture relaxed but my eyes sharp.
“Maya.”
He stopped just inside the doorway as if afraid to come closer without permission. This was new. He’d never asked permission for anything in my presence.
“Dad, have a seat.”
He sat, perching on the edge of the chair like he might need to bolt. His hands gripped his knees, and I noticed for the first time how old they looked. Age spots, prominent veins, the slight tremor of exhaustion or nerves. I didn’t know.
“I didn’t know any of this. How could I not know?”
“You never asked.”
I kept my voice level. Professional.
“You never asked what Next was or what I did there. You assumed, and I let you assume.”
“But why?”
The word came out plaintive, confused.
“Why let me think? Why humiliate me like this?”
I leaned back in my chair, studied him the way I’d studied hundreds of business adversaries across conference tables.
“Do you remember what you said to me when I told you I wanted to study computer science? I was 16. We were at dinner at that Italian place on Main Street. You told me I wasn’t smart enough for a real STEM field, that I should focus on something practical like accounting or nursing.”