The first sign, in retrospect, had been the argument about footnotes.
Dr. Okafor's team had assembled, by early December, a preliminary draft of the historical account meant to accompany the eventual public unveiling, and Julian, reviewing the budget implications of publishing it as a standalone volume rather than folding it into the company's existing corporate history archive, had found himself in a genuine disagreement with Isabella over how the material should be framed — an argument that began, Wren gathered secondhand from Dr. Okafor, as a straightforward disagreement about production costs and ended, forty minutes later, as something considerably more personal and considerably louder than either of them had apparently intended.
"He wanted to trim the personal correspondence down t
