Vaughn stood and walked to the podium, and the room quieted. He looked out over the crowd with the easy confidence of a man who had done this a hundred times, and he smiled the smile of someone who believed the room belonged to him.
"Good morning," he said. "Thank you all for being here. I know there's been a lot of uncertainty since the acquisition, so I want to be direct with you about where we're going."
He clicked a remote, and the screen filled with a slide: INTEGRATION β OUR PATH FORWARD.
"Langston Holdings chose Crestview because we're the best at what we do," Vaughn said. "And our job now is to get even better. That means focus. That means discipline. That means making some hard choices about where we invest our energy."
Yvette felt Rosa go still beside her.
"In the coming weeks," Vaughn continued, "we'll be streamlining several programs to align with our core mission. We'll be harmonizing our performance standards across all teams. And we'll be partnering with Summit Advisory Group, a world-class firm, to help us identify opportunities for organizational efficiency."
The words were smooth and professional and every one of them was a knife wrapped in velvet. Streamlining. Harmonizing. Efficiency. Yvette translated them in her head as she had learned to do all week: cutting the ERG budgets, rigging the calibration, hiring the layoff consultants.
"We're also excited," Vaughn said, "to welcome our new owner to the Crestview family. Ms. Yvette Langston, founder and CEO of Langston Holdings, will be joining us β" he glanced at the empty chair, "β shortly. I know you'll all give her the warm Crestview welcome she deserves."
Polite applause rippled through the room. Yvette did not clap. She stood at the back with her hands at her sides and watched Peter Vaughn smile at the empty chair, and she thought about Monday morning, about cold concrete through her jeans, about "people like you always miss the corners."
"Now," Vaughn said, "I'd like to open it up for questions. I know you have them. Who wants to start?"
Hands went up β cautious, scattered. A woman from marketing asked about remote work policy. Vaughn answered smoothly. A man from engineering asked about the product roadmap. Smooth again. The questions were safe, the answers were smooth, and Yvette could feel the room's real questions pressing underneath like water against a dam: the layoffs, the budgets, the calibration, the fear.
She waited through four safe questions. She waited until Vaughn was relaxed, until his shoulders had dropped, until he believed the morning was going the way mornings like this always went. And then, from the back of the room, in the grey polo shirt of the invisible army, Yvette Langston raised her hand.
Vaughn's eyes found her, and for a fraction of a second, something flickered β the lobby, Monday, the knees, the napkins β and then it was gone, smoothed over by the certainty that temps didn't ask questions at town halls.
"Yes," he said, with the indulgent patience of a man granting an audience. "You, in the back."
Yvette stepped forward, into the aisle, where everyone could see her. Six hundred heads turned. The cameras β Tom Becker's cameras, and the town hall livestream cameras β turned with them.
"Thank you," she said, and her voice carried clearly through the atrium, steady as a bell. "My name is Yvette. I'm a temp with Brightpath Staffing. I've been working facilities here all week." A murmur ran through the crowd. Vaughn's smile didn't move, but his eyes narrowed. "My question is about the integration plan. Specifically, about the decision to cut the employee resource group budgets to zero β the mentoring programs, the textbook fund, the first-gen college group β and reallocate that money to, and I'm quoting the draft budget, 'executive experience enhancements.'"
The silence that followed was absolute. On the stage, Diane Foster went white. Nathan Cole stared at his shoes. And Peter Vaughn β Peter Vaughn looked at the woman in the grey polo shirt standing in the aisle, and Yvette watched him do the math, watched the pieces refuse to fit, watched him reach, instead, for the only tool he had ever needed.
"Security," he said into the microphone, without taking his eyes off her. "We have a disruption. Please escort this person out."
Two guards started forward from the doors. The crowd shifted, uneasy. Rosa made a small sound beside Yvette β a gasp, or a prayer. And Yvette stood perfectly still in the aisle, six hundred people watching, security closing in, and she reached into the pocket of her grey polo shirt, and she took out the thing she had carried all week, folded small and waiting.