The email subject line was innocuous.
> **Subject:** Q3 Cost Optimization Opportunities
Margot opened it because she opened everything that touched her boss.
She skimmed.
Operations suggestions. Travel policies. Vendor renegotiations.
Then she hit the bullet that made her pulse pound.
> – Evaluate Supplier Remediation Task Force budget for potential deferrals or reductions (see attached memo from Harker Capital re: capital allocation priorities)
Her jaw tightened.
Harker Capital.
The activist fund that had slunk onto their cap table two months ago like mold.
She clicked the attachment.
A four-page PDF filled her screen. Polite fonts. Weaponized data.
> **Harker Capital – Hale Innovations: Unlocking Value in the Post‑NexTelis Era**
She read faster.
They praised the NexTelis acquisition, of course. Called it “transformational.” “Bold.” “A once‑in‑a‑generation platform play.”
Then—
> We are, however, concerned about recent indications that management may be over‑rotating toward non‑core initiatives that dilute shareholder returns. In particular, we note: > > > – The creation of a Supplier Remediation Task Force, with a public commitment to “repairing” legacy harms. > – Reported spend of approximately $75M in FY to date on remediation‑related activities, with no clear KPI linkage to earnings.
Her teeth ground.
> While we recognize the importance of reputational management, we believe Hale can achieve its ethical objectives *without* compromising its fiduciary duty.
Ah. There it was.
She scrolled.
Recommendations.
> 1. Cap Supplier Remediation Task Force budget at 0.5% of annual revenue for the next three years. > 2. Refocus remediation on high‑visibility cases only, to maximize reputational benefit per dollar spent. > 3. Defer further discretionary remediation initiatives until NexTelis integration synergies have been fully realized.
Translation: do the bare minimum loudly and quietly drop the rest.
Her stomach roiled.
She pushed back from her desk, the wheels of her chair squeaking.
Across the floor, Raj looked up from his screen.
“You okay?” he mouthed.
She didn’t trust herself to speak.
Instead, she printed the memo.
Punched holes.
Slid it into a red folder.
Declan was in a finance pre‑brief with Eliza until nine‑thirty. She checked the time—9:12.
She didn’t wait.
She walked straight into the conference room where they’d holed up.
Eliza sat at the head, glasses on, laptop open. Three finance VPs ringed the table.
Declan stood by the screen, jacket off, sleeves rolled, pointing at a chart showing actuals versus projections.
He broke off mid‑sentence when he saw her.
“Margot,” he said, tone tilting. “We’re in the middle of—”
She held up the red folder.
“Contagion,” she said. “We have an infection.”
He scanned her face.
Something in his eyes sharpened.
“Eliza,” he said. “Ten minutes.”
She took one look at the folder, then at Margot, and nodded.
“Break,” she told the room. “Refill coffee. Pretend you don’t hear anything.”
They filed out, murmuring.
Declan closed the door behind them.
“What,” he said.
She handed him the memo.
He flipped it open.
Read.
His jaw went hard.
By page two, a muscle ticked near his temple.
By page three, he muttered, “Of course.”
He dropped the packet onto the table like it was contaminated.
“They sent this to the full board?” he asked Eliza.
“Yes,” she said grimly. “At six a.m. Copying IR. They’ll ‘release it to the broader investor community’ after our call if we ‘refuse to engage constructively.’”
“Engage constructively,” he echoed. “Meaning: do what they want.”
“Pretty much,” she said.
He looked at Margot.
Her expression was calm.
Too calm.
“You saw the cap recommendation?” she asked quietly.
“Yes,” he said.
“They want us to turn the task force into PR triage,” she said. “Big, splashy cases only. No boring ones. No quiet ones.”
“And they want us to defer anything that doesn’t win headlines,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed.
Silence thickened.
“They’re not wrong about $75 million,” Eliza said reluctantly. “It’s… not nothing.”
“I know,” Margot said. “I also know the cost of not spending it.”
Eliza’s gaze softened. “So do I.”
Declan picked up the memo again.
Weighed it like a weapon.
“What’s the board temperature?” he asked.
“Lukewarm,” Eliza said. “Patel’s with us. Marie’s twitchy. Chair’s… Chairmaning. Wants ‘balance.’”
“Harker’s making calls,” she added. “Selling this line about ‘course correction’ and ‘pragmatic compassion.’”
“Pragmatic compassion,” Margot repeated. “That’s… disgusting.”
“That’s fundraising copy,” Declan said, mouth curling. “They’re turning our ethics into their pitch deck.”
He looked at her.
“Color?” he asked.
“Orange,” she said. “Bordering on… lava.”
“Good,” he said. “We’ll need that.”
He turned back to Eliza.
“Options,” he said.
“Fight,” she said. “Compromise. Or cave.”
He snorted. “You know which one I’m not picking.”
“I know which one the board might,” she said.
He scrubbed his hand over his face.
“We have a fiduciary duty,” he said. “But not just to Harker. To all shareholders. And to the company’s long‑term health, which includes not becoming a litigation piñata.”
“We can make that argument,” Eliza said. “We’ve started. This memo just… ups the ante.”
He looked at Margot again.
“This is going to get uglier,” he said. “For you. For your task force. They’ll come after you. Say you’re a distraction. Or an indulgence.”
She smiled thinly.
“Let them try,” she said. “They underestimate how stubborn I am.”
He watched her.
“You sure you want to stay in the blast radius?” he asked.
She lifted her chin. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
His mouth twitched.
“Eliza,” he said. “Schedule a board call for Friday. Two hours. Full agenda. I want Harker on. And tell Legal to be there. I want them to hear this in real time.”
“Done,” she said, already typing.
He turned back to Margot.
“Between now and then,” he said, “we prep. You, me, Eliza, Priya, Alvarez. We build the case. In numbers. In stories.”
She nodded. “I’ll get Miguel and Hannah on a brief. Darryl too.”
“They’re not board‑friendly,” he warned.
“I know,” she said. “We don’t put them in the room. We put them in your head. So when Harker says ‘defer,’ you see faces, not just basis points.”
He held her gaze.
“Yes,” he said quietly.
She exhaled.
“Good,” she said. “Then let’s go contaminate some spreadsheets.”
***
By the time Friday rolled around, she felt like she’d been through a war.
They spent two days locked in strategy sessions—her, Declan, Eliza, Priya on Zoom, Dr. Alvarez occasionally dropping in with a question that made everyone wince.
“How are you quantifying trust?”
“How are you measuring ‘not being sued into oblivion for old NexTelis shit’?”
“How many people like Luis or your father are we *not* going to help even if we do all this?”
By Thursday night, Margot’s notes were a palimpsest of arguments, counterarguments, numbers, and words circled so hard the paper had torn.
She sat at her desk, rubbing her eyes, when her phone buzzed.
Maya.
> *You alive?*
: *Barely. Harker came for the task force.*
> *Of course they did. Activists always go for the soft tissue. How’s Declan?*
: *Sharpening his knives. And his ethics memo. Board call tomorrow.*
> *Good. Remember, you’re not there to save him. You’re there to save what you believe in. If those lines overlap, great. If not, choose yours.*
She stared at that.
> *Choose yours.*
She typed back.
: *Trying. Hard.*
***
The board call at nine on Friday started polite.
It didn’t stay that way.
Fifteen minutes in, after the Chair had droned through the agenda and Declan had given a crisp update on integration, Harker’s rep spoke.
A disembodied voice, smooth and practiced.
“First, let me say, we’re impressed with what you’ve built here, Declan,” said David Harker himself. “We’re aligned on the long‑term vision. We just think there are some near‑term adjustments that could unlock significant value.”
“Get to it,” Declan said, not bothering to sugarcoat.
Harker chuckled indulgently.
“As you’ve seen in our memo, we believe the Supplier Remediation Task Force has merit,” he said. “But the current spend trajectory is… aggressive. We’d like to see more focus on high‑impact cases and less on… diffuse, low‑visibility ones.”
Low‑visibility.
Margot’s pen dug into her pad.
“Define aggressive,” Declan said evenly. “$75 million is less than one percent of combined revenue. We spend more on bad software every year.”
Some board members chuckled.
Harker’s tone cooled a fraction.
“Optics matter,” he said. “Investors are watching. The Street is watching. When they see a line item labeled ‘remediation,’ they worry that you’re opening Pandora’s box.”
“Pandora’s box is already open,” Declan said. “We’re just… dealing with what came out.”
“And we applaud that,” Harker said. “To a point. But we can’t let what is, functionally, a charitable endeavor overshadow our core mandate.”
“It’s not charity,” Margot said before she could stop herself.
The room—or the audio grid—stilled.
“Excuse me?” Harker said.
She cleared her throat.
“This is Margot,” Declan said, saving her the need to introduce herself. “Head of Supplier Remediation. She’s… earned the floor.”
“Of course,” Harker said tightly. “We’ve read the piece about you, Ms. Chen. Impressive work.”
She ignored the compliment.
“This isn’t charity,” she repeated. “We’re not sprinkling money on sad stories to feel better. We’re restructuring relationships with critical partners. Past and present. That has value.”
“And cost,” Harker said.
“Yes,” she said. “So does doing nothing. Or doing the minimum loudest.”
He went quiet.
The Chair cleared his throat. “Let’s keep this constructive.”
“Eliza,” Declan said. “Walk us through the numbers.”
She did.
She’d built charts that showed not just current spend but modeled risk.
Legal liabilities avoided.
Supplier churn reduced.
Product delays averted by having more resilient partner networks.
Harker wasn’t convinced.
“We appreciate the sophistication of the modeling,” he said. “But models are only as good as assumptions. We’d like to see a cap. Some discipline.”
“Caps are easy to game,” Declan said. “If I tell my team they have 0.5% of revenue, they’ll hit it exactly. Whether it’s what’s needed or not.”
“Exactly,” Harker said. “Flexibility is dangerous.”
“For whom?” Margot asked.
“Pardon?” he said.
She didn’t back down.
“Flexibility is dangerous for people who want predictable returns,” she said. “It’s not dangerous for people who already took the hit when NexTelis pulled their contracts.”
“Ms. Chen,” the Chair said warningly.
“It’s okay,” Declan cut in. “We invited her here to tell us what we don’t want to hear. Let her.”
Harker laughed, brittle.
“Bold management style,” he said. “Letting your assistant challenge investors on a board call.”
“She’s not my assistant here,” Declan said, voice like ice. “She’s the person in this company who spends the most time actually talking to the people NexTelis hurt. You might want to hear from them someday too.”
“Is that a threat?” Harker asked.
“It’s an invitation,” Declan said. “You can say no.”
Silence.
Margot’s heart pounded.
She watched the faces around the table.
Patel looked amused.
Marie looked like she wanted to sink into the floor.
The Chair looked… tired.
“Here’s my proposal,” Declan said finally. “We set a *soft* target for remediation spend—0.7% of revenue over the next two years. We report quarterly on outcomes. Not just dollars. Actions. Cases. Policy changes. You get visibility. We retain discretion. We’ll wind it down when we and the task force believe we’ve addressed the worst of the legacy harms. Not when it’s convenient for a quarterly EPS beat.”
“0.7 is higher than 0.5,” Harker said.
“Math,” Declan said. “You’re welcome.”
“You’re asking us to trust you,” Harker said.
“Yes,” Declan said simply. “As you’ve asked the market to trust you with their capital.”
Margot bit back a grin.
Eliza pinched the bridge of her nose, hiding a smile.
The Chair cleared his throat. “Let’s… take this offline for a moment. Board only.”
Harker got the hint.
“Fine,” he said. “We’ll… consider. But know that we’ll be vocal if we don’t like where this is headed.”
“You’re always vocal,” Declan said. “I’d be worried if you weren’t.”
The call beeped as Harker disconnected.
The Chair sighed.
“Well,” he said. “That was… spirited.”
“Understatement,” Patel muttered.
“I’m not thrilled about activists dictating our ethics,” another board member said. “Feels… wrong.”
“Welcome to 2023,” Marie said dryly. “They dictate everything else.”
“Here’s what I think,” Patel said. “We let him run it. For now. The street seems to like the narrative. If it goes off the rails, we rein him in.”
“You say that like he’s a teenager,” Marie said.
“Emotionally, maybe,” Patel said.
Declan rolled his eyes.
“Board resolution?” the Chair said. “Approve a soft target at 0.7% with quarterly reporting?”
Murmurs.
Nods.
“No one else uses ‘soft target’ in a sentence,” Marie said. “But yes. Fine. Soft target. For now.”
They voted.
All eyes turned to Margot.
She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Don’t thank us,” Patel said. “We haven’t done anything yet. You have.”
The call ended.
The room exhaled.
Declan dropped into a chair, suddenly boneless.
Eliza rubbed her temples. “I need… a drink. Or five.”
“Later,” Margot said. “We have three remediation cases queued for you to sign off on.”
He groaned.
She smiled.
As they walked back toward the war room, shoulder to shoulder, their arms brushed.
They both felt it.
They both pretended they hadn’t.
For now.
---