He Came Back Running (Maya and Mason) novel Chapter 255

Chapter 255

Alex’s POV

The drive took eleven minutes

Maya sat beside me. She had not spoken since we got in the car…

Marcus drove.

Reeves called

Maya answered immediately.

“What do you have?” she said.

She listened.

I watched her face while she listened and assessing the information passed in real time, filtering it, determining what was usable and in what form and how quickly.

She ended the call.

Looked at me.

“The credential fraud documentation is confirmed,” she said. “Reeves has the forensic audit of the access logs….. the credentials that were used, the IP addresses, the timestamps. All of it showing authorisations that were physically impossible given the hospital records.”

“Can he get it to the board in time?”

“He’s sending it now,” she said. “To the company’s legal counsel. With a cover note explaining the regulatory implications of proceeding with a removal before the exculpatory evidence is in the record.”

I looked at the road ahead.

“That’s not going to stop the vote,” I said.

“No,” she said. “But it puts the board on notice that the vote, if it proceeds, is based on incomplete information.” She held my gaze. “Which is different from stopping it. Which is what we need for what comes after.”

The building

We came through the main entrance.

Not the private exit.

The main entrance, with the cameras that were still positioned, that had not left, that were going to continue being positioned until the story they were covering produced a different chapter.

I walked through them.

Maya beside me.

Not performing anything.

Simply walking.

Because the alternative was not walking.

+15 9/768

And that was not something I intended to do.

The security desk knew me.

Had known me for nine years.

“Mr. Voss,” the desk officer said.

“Morning,” I said.

We went through.

The boardroom.

The floor was quieter than I had ever seen it at this hour….

Through the glass panels of the boardroom, the directors.

Eight of them.

The screens running the coverage… the stock ticker, the news commentary, the visual language of a company crisis in real time.

I pushed the door.

The room stopped

Eight directors.

Eight faces turning from the screens and the documents and each other to the door.

To me….

The chairman at the head of the table.

Nooked around the table.

At the faces.

At the stack of documents in front of the chairman.

At the vote tally sheet, visible from this distance, that communicated the count had already been done.

I understood what had already happened before the chairman spoke.

“Alex,” the chairman said.

I came to the table

Sat in the chair at the far end… not my usual position, not the CEO position that existed at the other head. The visitor’s position.

I sat.

Folded my hands.

Waited for him to say what he was going to say.

“This decision wasn’t made lightly,” he said.

*15 PTLY

He looked at the documents

At the table.

Then at me.

“The financial review, the regulatory inquiry, the provisional holds, the allegation, the cumulative weight of the current position has produced a situation where the board believes the company’s interests require…

“You can say it plainly,” I said.

He looked at me

“You’ve decided to remove me,” I said.

A pause.

“A confidential vote,” he said. “The results…”

“Tell me the count,” I said.

He looked at the tally sheet.

“Six to two,” he said.

Six to two.

Six directors who had looked at the coverage and the stock price and the regulatory processes and the frozen accounts and the allegation and had made the institutional calculation that the institution required distance from the person at the centre of all of it.

Two directors who had looked at the same information and had made a different calculation.

I looked at the two faces around the table that were communicating something different from the others

Thanked them, without words…

The chairman spoke the formal version.

“Until every financial investigation has been concluded and the matters currently under review have been resolved, you are being relieved of your duties as Chief Executive Officer of Voss Maritime.”

The room was very quiet

The screens running their numbers.

The news ticker moving through its continuous account of what was happening to the company in the world outside this room.

I looked at the chairman

At the table.

At the folder in front of me, which contained documentation I had brought and which I now closed, because what was in it was for a different room on a different day when the evidence Reeves had sent was fully in the record.

Today was not that day.

Today was this

15 PM

I stood.

built this company to survive any storm,” I said.

pui

Not loudly.

“I built it to outlast any single person, including me. I built it to be larger than its crisis and larger than its circumstances.” I looked around the table. “I only hope the people leading it remember why it exists,”

I picked up the folder

Looked at the chairman one more time.

Then I walked out.

The corridor.

Maya was at the far end.

She had not come into the room… she had understood, without being told, that the room was mine to walk into and mine to walk out of.

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