Marcus knew all of them from the reports. The chief financial officer, a precise, nervous man named Howard Lim who had been the first person at the company to return Reed Meridian's calls fourteen months ago. The general counsel, Patricia Okafor, whom he had spoken to once on video and liked immediately. Two outside directors, both retired executives from other companies. Three members of the Pierce family, two elderly brothers and a niece in her forties, who together still held about eleven percent of the shares and who regarded the arrival of a West Coast investment group with the frank hostility of aristocrats watching the peasants storm the gates. And two of Marcus's own people, his partner Julia Chen and a young associate named David Asante, who had flown in on Sunday and who both gave him a quick, private look when he walked in.
Every one of the nine had seen the video. He could see it on their faces.
"Good morning," Marcus said. "Please. Sit."
They sat.
Marcus did not take the chair at the head of the table. He took the one to its right. After a moment of visible confusion, Richard Caldwell took the head, because it had been his chair for six years and he didn't seem to know what else to do.
"I want to start," Marcus said, "by saying that I know all of you have seen what happened on Friday. I know some of you have probably spent the weekend wondering how it would affect this meeting. So let me answer that now, and then we'll never have to talk about it again in this room." He looked around the table. "It won't. It doesn't. What happened on that airplane was between me and one person, and it's finished. This meeting is about this company. Nothing else."
There was a soft, collective exhalation around the table. One of the elderly Pierce brothers nodded stiffly.
"Now," Marcus said. "Let's talk about the company."
* * *
For the next two hours, they did.
Marcus had a way of running a meeting that the people at Caldwell and Pierce had not encountered before. He did not lecture. He did not make speeches. He asked questions. Short ones, specific ones, one after the other, in the same calm and attentive voice he had used on the plane. He asked Howard Lim about the debt-refinancing schedule and listened to the full answer without interrupting. He asked Patricia Okafor about three pending lawsuits and asked her to estimate their likely outcomes, and when she gave him a careful lawyer's answer, he asked her what she actually thought, and she told him, and he wrote it down.
He asked about the warehouse in Elizabeth, New Jersey, that had been losing money for four straight years, and the one in Columbus that was over capacity. He asked about the commercial leases in Chicago that the company had signed in 2021 at the top of the market. He asked about the four hundred warehouse workers laid off in 2023, and how much had been saved, and where the savings had gone.
When Howard Lim answered that last question, there was a long silence.
"So," Marcus said slowly, "in the same eighteen-month period that we eliminated four hundred hourly positions, the compensation of the top six executives at this company increased by a combined eleven point four million dollars."
"The increases were approved by the compensation committee," Richard said. "They were tied to performance metrics that—"
"Which metrics?"
Richard hesitated.
"Cost reduction," he said finally.
"Which was achieved primarily through the layoffs."
"In part."
"In large part, according to Mr. Lim's own figures." Marcus made a note. He did not look up. "Thank you. That's helpful."
Julia Chen, his partner, wrote something on her own pad and slid it toward David Asante, who nodded.
The Pierce niece, whose name was Catherine and who had been watching Marcus all morning with narrowed eyes, leaned forward.
"Mr. Reed," she said. "With respect, you've owned this company for nine days. My grandfather built it. Some of us have been on this board for twenty years. I'd like to know what you're actually planning to do here, rather than sit through an interrogation about decisions made long before you arrived."
Marcus looked up from his notes.
"That's a fair question," he said. "I'll answer it."
He set down his pen.
"I'm planning to keep this company. Not break it up. Not sell off the real estate and dump the logistics business, which is what three other firms that looked at this deal before me were planning to do. I'm planning to fix it. That means new financing, which Julia has already arranged at a rate about two hundred basis points better than what you're paying now. It means closing Elizabeth and expanding Columbus. It means renegotiating the Chicago leases, which Patricia believes we can do. And it means bringing back at least a hundred and fifty of the warehouse jobs that were cut in 2023, at the same pay they had before, with an option for the people who were laid off to come back first."
There was a stunned silence.
"And it means," Marcus went on, "a full review of how this company treats its people. Every level. Every department. Starting at the top."
He turned and looked down the length of the table at Richard Caldwell.
"I've read the personnel files, Mr. Caldwell. I've read the HR records. I've read the complaints. Thirty-one of them in four years. All closed. None substantiated."
Richard's face had gone very still.
"I'd like to talk about those," Marcus said. "But not here. Not now. This afternoon. I have a two o'clock meeting with one of your senior analysts, and I'd like you to be there for part of it. After that, you and I are going to sit down, just the two of us, and you're going to explain to me how a company with eleven hundred employees manages to receive thirty-one discrimination complaints in four years and not find a single one of them worth a second look."
No one spoke.
Outside the long windows, a siren wailed somewhere down on Park Avenue and faded.
"We'll break for lunch," Marcus said. "Thank you all. I'll see the board again on Thursday."
* * *
Denise Carter had been at Caldwell and Pierce for nine years.
She was forty-four years old, with close-cropped natural hair streaked with gray, and reading glasses on a beaded chain that reminded Marcus, absurdly, of every church usher he had known growing up. She had a master's degree in urban planning from Columbia and an MBA from NYU, which she had earned at night while working full time. She knew more about the company's real estate portfolio than anyone else in the building, possibly including the people who had bought most of it. She had been passed over for promotion to director four times.
She walked into the small conference room on the thirty-ninth floor at exactly two o'clock carrying a thick binder and a legal pad, and she sat down across the table from Marcus with her back very straight and her hands folded on top of the binder.
She did not smile.