Handled

Raymond's office had a view of the river and a wall of deal tombstones, little engraved plaques from every merger he had ever closed. Jo stood in front of his desk with a printout in her hand like it might still change his mind.

The inventory number's real, he said, not looking up from his own screen. Forty million on a company this size, that's noise.

It's not noise, she said. It's a hidden tab labeled real with a different number in it. And the debt covenant edit came from your assistant's login.

That got him to look up.

You went through revision histories at midnight instead of sleeping, he said. That's the job, sometimes. But you don't have a fraud, Jo. You have a messy data room and three days before we're supposed to be popping champagne.

Shouldn't we at least flag it to...

Flag it to who? Vantage has three hundred million dollars of financing lined up and a closing date the whole street is watching. You want to walk into that room four days out and tell them their target lied about inventory, based on a spreadsheet tab?

Based on evidence.

Based on a first-year's evidence. His voice softened, the way it did when he wanted something to land differently than it sounded. You're up for the associate committee in six weeks. Don't let a rounding ghost turn into the thing people remember about you.

She left without agreeing, because agreeing was not the same as being convinced.

She came back twenty minutes later for the folder she had forgotten on his side table, and his office door was open a crack, his voice low and unhurried on the phone.

She found the inventory number, he was saying. No, no, she doesn't have anything that would hold up. I'll handle it.

Jo stood very still in the hallway, folder forgotten, listening to the sound of her mentor promising someone, in a voice with no doubt in it at all, that she would be dealt with.