She sat because there was nothing else left to do. Three days earlier, Talia had laughed when I transferred her from the executive office to the company kitchen, calling the assignment “beneath her.” She had no idea why I had done it. She thought I was an angry mother-in-law humiliating her after the birthday dinner where she had refused to let my grandson sit at the table because, in her words, “people like that should learn their place.” What she did not know was that I had spent eighteen months hearing quiet complaints about her. Employees disappeared from her division one by one, and every time, she found a way to make the problem look like theirs.
Now she was sitting across from me in my office, expecting an apology. Instead, I reached beneath my desk and pulled out a thick folder. Her confidence returned for half a second—until I placed it on the table and opened it.
