He Came Back Running (Maya and Mason) novel Chapter 148

Chapter 148

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Chapter 148

Mason’s POV

I arrived at the building earlier than usual….. earlier than almost anyone else, the lobby security desk manned by the overnight shift who nodded at my card without the particular awareness that came with a full building.

The corridors were quiet. The executive floor was empty.

I sat at the desk that was mine by shareholder standing, not by title, and opened the first report.

The lightness had been there when I woke up

I had noticed it the way you noticed the absence of something you had been carrying… not the presence of something good, but the temporary suspension of weight. The previous night had produced a kind of distance from the accumulation of the past weeks. Not resolution. Distance.

I had come in early because early meant work, and work was the one context in which everything operated on terms I understood.

The reports were in front of me. I read them

The numbers told a story that the public coverage had been suggesting but not quantifying.

Three weeks of disruption…. the scandal, the shooting, the DNA situation, the wedding that had ended in a hospital…. had produced the kind of instability that markets read immediately and responded to before analysts had finished writing the notes.

Share price down eight percent from the week of the press conference. Two institutional investors had reduced their positions. The Bayport contract implementation was running behind the timeline Maya had announced.

And Maya was at the hospital….

She had been at the hospital for four days.

With Alex unconscious and a shooting under investigation and her own medical situation following the altercation at the hospital…. the fall, the brief scare, the monitoring that Rivaldi had confirmed was precautionary, she was not walking through those doors tomorrow.

Or the day after

I read the numbers again.

Thought about the board.

The board had been shifting since the takeover.

Some of them had come to Maya’s press conference. Some had voted for her in the governance challenge. But board members were institutional in their priorities…. they followed the governance position when the governance was clear, and they followed stability when the governance became uncertain.

The current situation was not clear.

The current situation was a CEO who had been absent for the better part of two weeks, whose personal life was being discussed across three separate investigative threads, whose engagement and wedding had produced a shooting and an attempted IV tampering and a hospitalised fiancé.

I thought about Henderson

1/3

Chapter 148

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About the board members whose loyalty was calibrated to profit and perception rather than principle.

About the specific, narrow window between a CEO’s absence becoming notable and a board’s patience becoming formal.

The document was in the third folder

Board communications…. internal, the kind that circulated between members before formal sessions to establish positions. I had access to them through my minority shareholder rights, which Maya had not moved to restrictin the governance transition, possibly because she had been managing everything else and hadn’t got there yet.

I read through the first two.

The third stopped me….

A memo from one of the independent directors…. not Henderson, someone I hadn’t expected, someone who had attended Maya’s press conference and sat in the front row and seemed, at the time, aligned.

The memo was addressed to the board chair.

It raised the question of continuity of leadership

It noted the period of absence.

It cited the reputational concerns.

And at the bottom, in the careful language of someone who understood that the formal version of a suggestion needed to be framed as a question rather than a proposal until the room was ready for a proposal:

Given the circumstances, should the board consider whether a formal review of executive leadership is warranted if Ms. Hargrove has not resumed active duties within the next two weeks?

I read it twice….

Looked at the date.

Three days ago.

The memo was three days old and had been circulating among the board for three days without anyone informing Rivaldi, who would have informed Maya, which meant either the communication had been contained deliberately or the members receiving it had not yet decided how to handle it.

Either way, it was moving.

I leaned back in the chair

The City was visible through the window….. the grey, consistent water that had been the backdrop of every significant thought I had sat with in this building.

Maya was at the hospital.

The board was asking questions….

The numbers were declining.

And I had ten percent and shareholder standing and a history with this company that predated every person currently in an executive role.

I looked at the memo.

2/3

huge LAN

At the formal proposal sitting at its bottom, dressed as a question.

One director

Already.

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Segnus

Three days ago.

I thought about patience. About the gracious loser who had walked out of this building months ago with a plan that had been running quietly ever since.

The plan had not required the shooting.

The plan had not required Alex in a hospital bed either….

But the situation that existed now…..the absence, the instability, the memo…. this was not the plan’s doing.

This was simply what had happened.

And what had happened had produced an opening that the plan had been working toward for months through considerably more effort.

I picked up the memo

Read it one more time.

Then I picked up my phone and sent a message to Patterson: Board communications. Director Harris. I want everything he’s said privately in the past two weeks.

Put the phone down.

I smelled an opportunity, and like every shark that perceives blood in the ocean, I’m going hunting.

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