The first real test of the Supplier Remediation Task Force came from a small town in Ohio.
On paper, Chen Manufacturing Solutions, Inc. looked like a hundred other names on the legacy list.
Medium-sized. Regional. Specializing in precision components for agricultural equipment.
In reality, it was a family run outfit that had once been the economic heart of a town called Grayford.
NexTelis had gutted it in 2015.
Priya brought the case to the task force with a grim expression.
“Meet the ghost of Christmas future,” she said, sliding a packet across the table. “If we fuck this up, this is what we’ll be for a thousand other people.”
Margot flipped through.
A familiar pattern.
NexTelis courting them with promises of scale.
Encouraging them to expand.
Banks offering credit lines on the strength of NexTelis contracts.
Then the rug pull.
“We've already seen this movie,” Darryl muttered.
“Yes,” Priya said. “But this one has a twist. They didn’t go quietly.”
She pointed at a line.
*Class action suit filed 2017. Settled 2019. Terms sealed.*
Margot’s jaw tightened.
“So there’s already been a legal resolution,” Eliza said, scanning. “We can’t just… reopen that.”
“We can if we choose to,” Dr. Alvarez said on-screen. “Legally, we’re not *obligated* to. Ethically, the question is: did the settlement reflect actual harm? Or did NexTelis bury them under lawyers until they accepted pennies on the dollar?”
“Take a wild guess,” Priya said.
Gita cleared her throat. “What are they asking us for now?”
Margot flipped to the last page.
An email.
From: *Hannah Chen (no relation), CFO, Chen Manufacturing Solutions.*
Subject: *Hale / NexTelis Legacy Harms.*
> We’ve seen the news. We know you’re not the ones who did this to us. > > > We also know you now own the company that did. > > > According to the settlement we signed in 2019, we’re not supposed to talk about what happened. We did anyway, because we’re tired of being quiet while bigger players call that “closure.” > > > Here’s what we want: > > * An acknowledgment, in writing, that what NexTelis did to us was wrong—even if it was “legal.” > * A commitment that Hale will not repeat those practices with any of our peers. > * A seat at the table as you design your new supplier policies. Not as supplicants. As advisors. > > > We don’t expect you to cut us a check. We wouldn’t say no. But money won’t fix what we’ve lost. > > > Being heard might. > > > Sincerely, > > > Hannah & Miguel Chen > Grayford, OH
The room was quiet.
Margot’s throat burned.
“That’s new,” Gita said softly. “They’re not asking for money.”
“They’re asking for dignity,” Darryl said. “For a voice.”
Eliza chewed her pen. “Legal is going to have a coronary if we touch a sealed settlement.”
“Legal can manage their own arteries,” Priya said. “I’m more interested in whether we have the stomach to do something different.”
All eyes turned to Margot.
And, beyond her, to Declan, sitting at the far end.
He didn’t look at them.
He looked at the letter.
She took a breath.
“We bring them in,” she said. “We invite them to a call. We listen. We don’t make promises we can’t keep. But we make the ones we *can*.”
“Which are?” Eliza asked skeptically.
“One: we can commit to naming what happened,” Margot said. “Publicly. Internally, at least. Maybe externally. Two: we can invite them to consult on our new partner standards. Not as fig leaves. As actual stakeholders. Three: we can codify in policy that we will not repeat specific practices they suffered from.”
“Like encouraging overexpansion without guarantees,” Gita said.
“Like termination clauses with thirty-day windows after huge capital outlays,” Priya added.
“Like using proprietary supplier data to undercut them,” Darryl said.
“Yes,” Margot said. “We can’t undo their past. We can make sure their pain has… leverage.”
Dr. Alvarez nodded. “That aligns with best practices in restorative justice. Recognition. Participation. Prevention. Not perfect, but better than silence.”
Eliza sighed. “You know the board is going to freak out if we start inviting people we’ve settled with to sit at our policy table.”
“So we don’t frame it as ‘reopening settlements,’” Margot said. “We frame it as ‘learning from past stakeholders.’ This isn’t about liability. It’s about… design.”
Priya smirked. “You should be in PR.”
“I am,” Margot said. “On hard mode.”
All eyes shifted to Declan again.
He remained silent for a beat.
Then looked up.
“I agree,” he said.
Margot exhaled.
“We’ll get pushback,” Eliza warned. “From Legal. From Finance. From the board.”
“I’ll handle them,” he said.
“You sure?” she asked.
He met her gaze.
“Yes,” he said. “If we don’t do this… what are we even doing?”
Silence hummed.
Then, slowly, heads nodded.
After the meeting, as people filed out, he lingered.
“So,” Priya said to Margot, slipping her bag over her shoulder. “You’re going to call them?”
“Yes,” Margot said. “I’ll set it up. You and I. Maybe Dr. Alvarez. Not him. Not yet.”
“Wise,” Priya said. “Too much power in the room at once, they’ll clam up. Or explode.”
“Both,” Margot said.
Priya grinned. “My favorite.”
When they were alone, Margot turned to Declan.
“You meant that,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“You’re really going to let people you hurt—indirectly, but still—have a say in how you operate,” she pressed.
“Yes,” he said again.
“Knowing they might tell you to your face that you’re the villain,” she said.
He swallowed. “Yes.”
She studied him.
“You’re… changing,” she said quietly.
He gave a half-smile. “You sound surprised.”
“I am,” she said. “A little.”
“Disappointed?” he asked.
Her lips twitched. “Relieved.”
He stepped closer.
Not too close.
Just enough that she could see the fatigue in the lines around his eyes.
“How are you?” he asked.
She blinked. “We’re not… talking about me. Right now.”
“We should,” he said. “You looked… wrecked reading that letter.”
She hesitated.
“It’s… familiar,” she admitted. “Different town. Different name. Same story. I keep thinking… if someone had done this ten years ago—if someone had said, ‘What happened to your father was wrong, and here’s how we’re going to make sure it doesn’t happen again’—it wouldn’t have fixed anything. But it might have… helped.”
He nodded slowly.
“Maybe,” he said. “We can’t fix the past. But we can… be the people we wish had been there.”
Her throat tightened.
“Look at you,” she said lightly. “Quoting self-help books.”
He smirked. “Kline again.”
“I need to meet this woman,” Margot muttered.
“No,” he said. “Territorial.”
She laughed.
He watched her.
“After we talk to them,” he said, “your father. Would you… want to invite him into this process? Not right away. But… eventually.”
She stilled.
“I don’t know if he’d… want that,” she said. “He’s… exhausted. Angry. Being asked to relive it for the sake of your conscience might kill him.”
“I’m not thinking of my conscience,” he said quietly. “I’m thinking… if he ever wants to… use his pain as… leverage. Or as… wisdom. I want space for that. If he doesn’t, we don’t force it. His choice.”
She swallowed.
“I’ll… think about it,” she said.
He nodded.
“Color?” she asked abruptly, needing to cut the weight.
“Yellow,” he said. “Maybe green. You?”
She tilted her head. “Chartreuse.”
He grimaced. “Terrible.”
“I know,” she said. “It means we’re doing something right and wrong at the same time.”
He huffed. “Story of our lives.”
***
The call with Hannah and Miguel Chen was scheduled for Thursday afternoon.
Margot spent the morning pacing her office (a tiny, glass-walled cubicle they’d carved out for her near the war room when it became clear she could no longer just hover at a desk), rehearsing.
She’d drafted an opening.
Simple.
Honest.
No promises.
> Thank you for talking to us. We’re not here to fix what happened. We can’t. We’re here to listen, and to talk about how we might do things differently going forward—with your input.
She’d run it by Priya and Dr. Alvarez.
They’d approved.
Now her palms were sweaty.
Priya walked in, laptop under her arm.
“Ready?” she asked.
“No,” Margot said. “Let’s go.”
They went to a smaller conference room.
Declan was not there.
By design.
He’d asked.
She’d said no.
He’d listened.
She opened the video link.
Two faces appeared.
A woman in her late thirties, hair in a loose bun, dark circles under her eyes. A man around the same age, beard flecked with gray, baseball cap with *Grayford Cornhuskers* on it.
“Hannah? Miguel?” Margot said.
“Yeah,” Hannah said warily. “You’re… Chen.”
“Yes,” Margot said. “Margot. No relation. Our fathers have similar bad luck.”
A flicker of amusement passed over Hannah’s face.
“You’re with Hale,” Miguel said. “Not NexTelis.”
“Yes,” Margot said. “And we’re… complicated.”
“This is Priya,” she added, gesturing. “She runs the fund that bought some of NexTelis’s distressed loans. She’s working with us on supplier remediation. And Dr. Alvarez—” she nodded at the screen where the ethicist’s face appeared “—is helping us not be idiots.”
Dr. Alvarez waved.
“Y’all got a lot of people for ‘listening,’” Miguel muttered.
“Less than we have for ‘profit,’” Priya said dryly. “We’re trying to rebalance.”
He snorted.
Margot took a breath.
“Thank you for talking to us,” she said, going to her script. “We’re not here to fix what happened to you. We can’t. We’re here to understand it better. And to talk about how we might, with your input, make sure we don’t do the same to others.”
Silence.
Hannah studied her.
“You sound… practiced,” she said. “Like you’ve said that before.”
“In my head,” Margot admitted. “A lot.”
Hannah’s mouth twitched.
“You’ve read our letter,” she said.
“Yes,” Margot said. “And your filings. And the press from 2017. And the tiny blurb in NexTelis’s annual report about ‘legacy settlement costs.’”
Hannah’s jaw tightened. “That’s what we are. A line item.”
“You were,” Margot said. “We’re trying to… change that. If you’ll let us. And if you won’t, we’ll… learn anyway.”
Miguel snorted. “Honest. I’ll give you that.”
“What do you want to know?” Hannah asked, folding her arms.
Margot swallowed.
“Whatever you’re willing to tell us,” she said. “Beyond what’s in the filings. What it *felt* like. What they said. What you needed that you didn’t get.”
Hannah laughed, sharp.
“What it felt like,” she repeated. “You sure you want that, Ms. Chen?”
“Yes,” Margot said. “I’m… familiar with drowning in someone else’s corporate decision. I still want to hear.”
Miguel sighed.
“Okay,” he said. “You asked.”
For an hour, they talked.
Hannah and Miguel described the slow creep of dependency on NexTelis.
The way the bank had started treating NexTelis’s purchase orders as collateral.
The “business reviews” where NexTelis reps had pressured them to expand.
“’Think bigger,’ they said,” Hannah recounted. “’You’re leaving money on the table.’ We mortgaged the building to buy new machines. Hired twenty people. Then… three months later… ‘strategic realignment.’ Just like that.”
Miguel’s hands clenched as he spoke.
“We went to them,” he said. “Begged. ‘Give us six months. Let us find other clients.’ They said, ‘It’s not personal. Just business.’ Like that makes it okay.”
Hannah’s eyes shone.
“We sued,” she said. “Everyone said we were crazy. ‘They have better lawyers.’ ‘You’ll bankrupt yourself.’ We did it anyway. It almost killed us. We settled because we had to. Kids. Mortgages. Exhaustion. They wrote us a check that covered maybe a quarter of what we’d lost. We signed an NDA. We shut up.”
“And now you’re talking,” Priya said.
“Because what are they going to do,” Miguel said. “Sue us for breaking an NDA from a company that doesn’t even exist anymore? Maybe. Let ’em try.”
Margot’s chest ached.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For… this. I know you don’t owe us this.”
Hannah shrugged. “We’re not doing this for you,” she said. “We’re doing it because maybe, if we scream loud enough, someone will hear before it happens to them.”
“Yes,” Margot said. “That’s… what we want too.”
“Is it?” Hannah asked. “Or is this just… optics? Hale gets to say, ‘Look at us, we’re listening to the little guys.’”
“It can be both,” Dr. Alvarez said, cutting in. “It *will* be both. Intentions matter less than structures. That’s what we’re here to build.”
“What do you want from us?” Miguel asked. “Beyond a free therapy session.”
Margot took a breath.
“Help us design… guardrails,” she said. “Red lines. Specific practices you’d want to see banned. Specific commitments you wish NexTelis had made. We can’t promise we’ll adopt all of them. But we can promise we’ll consider them. And we can give you visibility into whether we do.”
Hannah blinked. “That’s… more than we’ve been offered before.”
“It’s not enough,” Margot said.
“No,” Hannah agreed.
“But it’s something,” Miguel said slowly.
“Yes,” Margot said.
They spent the next hour drafting a rough list.
No termination clauses under ninety days for contracts requiring capital expenditure over a certain threshold.
Mandatory independent review for any partner contract where one side represented more than 50% of the smaller party’s revenue.
Transparent grievance processes with third-party oversight.
Miguel added, at one point, “And don’t… talk to us like we’re kids. Don’t call us ‘family’ and then drop us. Don’t send ‘sorry, just business’ emails.”
“Language,” Hannah said. “Put that in there too. It matters.”
Margot wrote it down.
After the call, when the screen blinked dark, she sat for a moment, pen frozen.
Priya sighed. “That was… intense.”
“Yes,” Dr. Alvarez said. “And necessary.”
Declan appeared in the doorway, having watched from the hallway, per their agreement.
“Wow,” he said quietly.
“You listened?” Margot asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I stayed out of frame. Mostly because I didn’t trust myself not to… say something stupid.”
She huffed. “Growth.”
He stepped into the room, nodding at Priya and Dr. Alvarez.
“Thank you,” he said. “All of you.”
“We’re billing you for it,” Priya said.
“I expect nothing less,” he said.
He turned to Margot.
“You okay?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “But… better than I was yesterday.”
He nodded.
“That’s… something,” he said.
She studied him.
“You meant what you said last week,” she said. “About not wanting to be… that guy.”
“Yes,” he said.
“You’re not him,” she said. “Not yet.”
“High praise,” he muttered.
“Dangerously close to a compliment,” she agreed.
He smiled faintly.
As they walked back to the war room, side by side, she felt something shift under her feet.
Not a crack.
Not a collapse.
A reorientation.
They were still on a fault line.
They always would be.
But maybe, just maybe, they were learning how to build on it without guaranteeing destruction.
She hoped so.
Because the other option—walking away from this, from him, from the chance to turn pain into something marginally less pointless—felt, suddenly, like its own kind of cowardice.
She wasn’t ready to forgive.
She wasn’t ready to fall.
She *was* ready to fight.
With him.
Against him.
Beside him.
Whatever it took.
For now, that was enough.