"βdon't care what the dashboard says, the optics are bad. Three ERG events in one quarter? It looks like we're running a social club, not a software company."
A second voice, younger, hesitant: "The engagement scores for ERG members are twenty points higherβ"
"Engagement doesn't close deals, Kevin." A pause. Papers shuffling. "And frankly, with the acquisition, we need to be realistic. The new owners β we don't know what they are yet. For all we know it's another diversity initiative with a checkbook. I'm not building programs for an owner who might not even β" She stopped. Lowered her voice. Yvette couldn't catch the rest, but she caught the tone, and the tone was the whole story: the careful, professional language of someone who had decided what kind of company this should be, and who it should be for.
Rosa, wiping the counter beside her, didn't look up. "Another diversity initiative," she murmured, so quietly only Yvette could hear. "That's what she thinks you are. Whoever you are."
Yvette's hands tightened on the cloth. "Rosaβ"
"I know." Rosa finally looked at her, and her eyes were clear and direct. "I've known since Tuesday, honey. The lobby. I was there. I saw his face, and I saw yours, and I've been doing this long enough to know when somebody's wearing a costume." She held up a hand before Yvette could speak. "I don't know who you are, and I don't want to know until you're ready to tell me. But whatever you're doing here β" she glanced toward the conference room, "β do it right. That's all I ask."
Yvette felt something crack open in her chest β not breaking, but widening, the way a door opens. "I will," she said. "I promise."
They finished the kitchenette in silence, the kind of silence that isn't empty but full, and Yvette thought about the two people in this building who had figured her out β a security guard and a facilities lead, the two people whose entire jobs consisted of noticing things β while the executives on the eighth floor, with all their dashboards and assessments, had seen nothing at all.
At lunch, her phone buzzed. Denise: Calibration data is in. It's bad. Call when you can.
Yvette waited until Rosa went to check on a supply delivery, then slipped into the stairwell and called.
"Talk to me," she said.
Denise didn't waste words. "Three years of calibration records, anonymized but with demographic markers intact. Yvette β it's not subtle. Black employees are rated 'below expectations' at nearly three times the rate of white employees in the same roles. Latino employees, twice. And the normalization sessions β Foster's team moves people down, never up, and eighty percent of the downward moves hit employees of color. The pattern is so clean you could teach statistics from it."
Yvette closed her eyes. "And the ERG budgets?"
"Cut to zero in the draft integration budget. All of them. The money's reallocated to β get this β 'executive experience enhancements.' Which, based on what you've told me, means orchids and hand towels."
"And Summit Advisory?"
"Three hundred ten thousand, signed two weeks before the acquisition closed. Scope of work is β and I'm quoting β 'post-merger organizational assessment with emphasis on role redundancy identification.' I had Priya pull their last three engagements. Every single one ended in layoffs concentrated in the same demographic bands we're seeing in the calibration data. It's a playbook, Yvette. They get hired to produce the paper trail."
Yvette leaned her forehead against the cool concrete wall of the stairwell. Below her, she could hear the building humming β elevators, HVAC, the thousand small machines of a working company. "Send everything to Priya. I want it organized by tomorrow morning. Timelines, names, dollar figures. All of it."
"Already on it." A pause. "Yvette β what are you going to do at the town hall?"
Yvette thought about Vaughn in the restroom, phone to his ear, talking about "the usual distribution." She thought about Malik's algorithm with another man's name on it. She thought about Rosa, eighteen years, "invaluable where she was." She thought about Tom Becker's question: are you here to actually do something?
"I'm going to ask a question," she said. "As a temp. From the back of the room. And then I'm going to see what happens."
"Jesus, Yvette."
"Have Priya draft the suspension paperwork tonight. Vaughn. Pending investigation, effective immediately upon my word. And have her pull Foster's file too β every complaint, every buried report, everything Tom Becker ever put in a drawer."
"You're sure about Foster?"
"I'm sure that nobody gets to decide who this company is for." Yvette straightened up. "One more thing. I need you to find out who approved the Summit Advisory contract. I want the signature."