Chapter 8 - The Corner Office
The forty-fifth floor of the Cole Meridian Tower smelled of stale coffee, ozone, and panic.
When I stepped off the private elevator, thirty senior employees were standing near the open-plan cubicles, holding folders, tablets, and coffee cups they had forgotten to drink. The news channels were running on four wall-mounted screens in the reception hall, displaying Harrison’s mugshot side-by-side with the corporate logo.
When they saw me, every conversation ceased instantly.
It was not the respectful silence they used to give Harrison when he walked through with his entourage. It was the deep, terrified reverence people reserve for a natural disaster that has just settled into human form.
I wore a charcoal wool suit, my hair pulled back into a neat, low bun. No jewelry except my mother’s gold watch. No silver dress. No drama.
Richard Vance stepped out of the corner office—Harrison’s former office—holding a stack of file folders.
“The board is waiting in Executive Conference Room A, Claire,” he said softly.
“Thank you, Richard. Is the interim CEO candidate ready?”
“He’s on the line from Chicago,” Vance said. “David Sterling recommended Dr. Marcus Thorne. Former head of operations at Intel. Clean record, sixty-two years old, no social media presence, and he hates publicity.”
“Perfect,” I said. “Tell him he starts on Monday.”
I walked toward the corner office.
The heavy glass door was half-open. Inside, two facilities workers were packing Harrison’s personal belongings into large brown wardrobe boxes: his framed photos from golf tournaments in Pebble Beach, his leather-bound books that had never been opened, his crystal decanters, his three spare jackets hanging in the private wardrobe.
On the large desk—the mahogany desk that Arthur Cole had bought in 1994—sat a single item that had not been packed.
A small silver framed photo.
It was from our wedding twelve years ago.
We were standing on the lawn of his parents’ estate in Greenwich. Harrison was thirty, handsome, his smile wide and unburdened by the greed that would eventually consume him. I was twenty-six, wearing a simple tulle veil, looking up at him with the absolute, uncritical devotion of a woman who believed she had found her partner for life.
I walked up to the desk.
I picked up the frame.
The glass was cool against my fingers.
I looked at the girl in the veil. I felt a sudden, sharp pang of pity for her—not because she had been betrayed, but because she had spent twelve years suppressing her own intellect, her own strength, her own voice, just to make a small man feel large.
“Mrs. Cole?” one of the workers asked, holding a piece of packing tape. “Do you want us to keep this?”
I looked at the photo one last time.
May you like
“No,” I said gently. “You can recycle the frame. The photo can go in the shredder.”
I set the frame down on the desk, turned around, and walked into the board room.
