Camille did not shift in her chair. She remained perfectly still, her spine straight, her hands loosely clasped over the leather of her handbag. The gold accents on the temples of her square black sunglasses reflected the grid of the ceiling lights above.
Richard took a step toward the center of the table, his mouth twisting into a sneer of incredulous recognition. The recognition was not of a peer, nor of a threat, but of someone he deemed beneath the baseline threshold of corporate visibility.
"You," he spat, the word dripping with condescension. He looked toward the glass doors, half-expecting security guards to burst through and rectify the absurdity. "What are you doing up here? Who let you on the executive elevator?"
None of the board members spoke. Sitting to Richard's left, Marcus Vance—a junior cousin with an artificial vice-presidency—frowned, shifting uncomfortably in his seat as he looked between Richard and the mysterious woman in the baroque skirt.
Richard walked two steps closer, his polished leather Oxford shoes striking the thick woven rug beneath the table. He picked up a thick, bound document that lay directly in front of his centerpiece chair. It was the preliminary independent forensic audit report—a fifty-page document printed late the previous evening, stamped with red CONFIDENTIAL lettering across its cover. It was the very report that had prompted this unscheduled emergency gathering, though Richard had spent the last twenty minutes attempting to dismiss it as a clerical error by a rogue third-party accounting firm.
"Is this some kind of joke?" Richard demanded, gesturing with the thick stack of paper toward Camille. "Do you think because the Chairman is out of the country on medical leave, this building has no discipline left? I know who you are. You’re the temp from the 61st-floor dining service. I saw you clearing espresso cups out of the conference lounge three weeks ago."
A subtle rustle passed through the board members. Vice President of Operations Eleanor Croft glanced up from her tablet, her eyebrows knitting together in confusion. She looked at Camille, assessing the flawless cut of her peplum bodice, the unmistakable line of haute couture in her skirt, the commanding calm that radiated from her posture—a aura completely at odds with Richard's dismissive accusation.
"Richard," Eleanor began cautiously, "perhaps we should clarify—"
"Shut up, Eleanor," Richard snapped, not turning his head. His eyes were locked on Camille, fueled by a dangerous cocktail of stress, corporate paranoia, and entitlement. The audit report in his hand was a ticking bomb; he was already operating at the absolute limit of his emotional control. The presence of an unauthorized outsider—especially one he believed he had previously ordered around like domestic help—was an insult his ego could not process.
He stepped directly up to the edge of the mahogany table, towering over the seated executives.
"This report," Richard shouted, raising the heavy bound forensic audit high above his head, "is garbage! It’s a tissue of lies fabricated by disgruntled former officers who can't stomach the modernization of this firm!"
With a violent, sweeping motion of his arm, Richard hurled the fifty-page document across the length of the boardroom.
The binding split upon impact. Pages erupted into the air like a flock of startled birds. White sheets covered in dense columns of financial figures, ledger entries, bank routing codes, and red-ink annotations rained down across the polished mahogany table. Pages fluttered onto the laps of horrified directors, slid across glass water carafes, and scattered over the dark carpet surrounding Camille's chair.
One single sheet—a page detailing offshore wire transfers to a shell entity known as Aegis Management LLC—landed directly on top of Camille's leather handbag.
Before anyone could react to the physical outburst, Richard slammed both of his open palms down onto the surface of the mahogany table with a deafening CRACK that echoed through the acoustic glass walls. He bent at the waist, leaning his upper body across the wood, his face contorted in anger, veins standing out along his jaw.
"Get out of my boardroom, waitress!" he roared, his voice shaking the heavy glass partitions. "Get out before I have security throw you out into the street in handcuffs!"
The sound of his shouting died away, leaving an eerie, suffocating vacuum in the room. Outside the glass walls, in the open-plan floor where dozens of administrative staff worked, heads turned toward the boardroom. Employees stood up at their cubicles, staring through the glass at the spectacle of the Interim CEO bellowing at a seated, motionless woman.
Inside the room, the silence was absolute.
Richard remained bent over the table, chest heaving slightly, his eyes burning with fury as he glared down the length of the mahogany at Camille. He expected her to flinch. He expected her to gather her bag in humiliation, to stumble out of the chair, to hurry toward the exit under the burning gaze of the company’s elite.
Camille did none of those things.
She did not flinch when the paper struck her bag. She did not blink when his hands smashed against the mahogany. She did not even shift her weight in the plush leather chair.