A WIFE UNTIL FUTHER NOTICE

Chaptertwo

The boardroom on the seventeenth floor had a view of Park Avenue, the one place Raymond Cameron had stopped looking at for the past fourteen months. Not because the view had changed but due to the fact that it still remained the same— gridlocked and carrying the same chaos of a city that ran on urgency.

What had changed was him, because somewhere between the signing of the Bilunia partnership agreement and the morning his CFO had walked into his office and submitted his resignation letter, Raymond had lost the ability to look at anything else and still feel the satisfaction he had once felt.

He arrived at seven fifteen, like he always did. The floor was still mostly empty at that hour except for a few early arrivals who sat hunched over their keyboards and the cleaning crew doing the last of the overnight work. He walked through the space without stopping, nodding once to the greeting of the security guard by the elevator, and went straight into his office.

He did not go to the boardroom until he was ready.

************

There was a version of the story that the financial press had told and they had really told it well — Cameron Group's catastrophic partnership with a firm claiming Bilunia Dynasty affiliation, the losses that followed and the structural damage that eighteen months of remediation had partially addressed.

The numbers were accurate but the narrative was not.

But there was one thing they had not written about because Raymond refused to tell them and that was the biggest mistake he had made as long as the whole scandal was concerned. It wasn't even because he was naive, he had been in business long enough to know that naivety was a luxury that died early in a man's career.

It was a certainty.

He had been certain about the opportunity when it presented itself, the access, infrastructure and wide reach that a legitimate Bilunia partnership would have given Cameron Group and that gave him the confidence of a man who had been right enough times to ever be wrong. He had moved without the board’s approval,committing his resources without the safety nets his father had spent decades creating. He had done it cleanly and with the conviction of someone who could not imagine the floor giving way.

But the floor had given way, in fact it shattered beneath his feet and it was his employee that felt the glass pierced deep into their skin. At least forty-one people had lost their jobs that morning. He would never forget their names as he had read every termination letter before it went out, even when his legal team advised against it but he did it anyway.

The company was gradually recovering, the numbers were beginning to move in the right directions but he knew that recovery without understanding the wound was just delayed. What Cameron Group needed as it stands was not more capital or time. It needed a mind capable of seeing the full extent of the damage and starting rebuilding it from inside out. It needed someone who could work without any kind of visibility that attracted the wrong attention, and still deliver results that spoke entirely for themselves.

Which was why he was interviewing six candidates that Thursday morning instead of doing any of the other things competing for his attention.

*************

Sandra had appeared in the doorway of his office that morning at eight forty-five with a tablet in one hand and coffee in the other. She set the coffee on his desk without being asked, she had been his assistant for the past four years and within the first month had learnt that the first thing to do every morning was to hand him his coffee before delivering information.

"Sir, we have six candidates coming in for the interview," she said, pulling up the first profile. "The first one is a lady and she arrives at nine, last one at two. I've blocked the boardroom through four o'clock in case any of them run long." She paused. "Though I'm not expecting any of them to do that."

"Alright, walk me through them." He said, picking up the coffee.

She ran through their profiles in five minutes. They were competent people with competent histories, the exact kind of candidates that existed in abundance in a city that ran on ambition. He listened, asked a question or two, and moved on.

"Last one," Sandra said, swiping to the final profile. "Josephine Cross," she said. "She applied for the job on Tuesday evening, there are no corporate placements on record — her background is consultancy, independent and her work history is lean." Another pause. "But the cover letter is not."

She handed him the tablet.

He read it once. Then again, more slowly, It was just two simple and concise paragraphs. It began with what she could do and ended with why it was relevant to Cameron Group's current situation, and in between it demonstrated a level of structural understanding that should not have been possible for someone whose documented experience was as thin as Sandra had described.

"What time is she in?" he asked, sitting the tablet down.

"Ten o'clock. She's the last slot."

He nodded and said nothing further. Sandra, who had learned to read his silence, collected the tablet and left without comment.

Then he turned his chair and looked out of his window before picking up his coffee and left for the boardroom.

*************

The first five interviews confirmed Sandra's assessment. They were all competent people who had the right answers delivered in the right order like people who had prepared for the conversation. He listened carefully to each of them but still found nothing that made him lean forward. He was a patient man, so he waited..

The interview was at ten.

Heather was there at nine forty-five, She walked the block once before entering the building, the way she always walked every unfamiliar space before entering into it. Cameron Group occupied floors fourteen through nineteen of the glass and steel tower on Park Avenue, a building that announced its own importance without trying very hard. The lobby was made of marble and the quiet confidence of money that dod not need to be proven. had been somewhere long enough to stop needing to prove it.

Raymond Cameron was nothong like what she had seen on the photograph. The photograph had shown her a man looking prim and proper, sitting composed in his dark suit. He was already reading her when she walked in and he didn't pretend otherwise.

She respected that. Instead, she took a seat across from the panel, set her portfolio on the table, and folded her hands.

"Josephine Cross," the woman to Raymond's left said, opening her folder. "Thank you for coming in."

"Thank you for the invitation," Heather said, plastering a smile on her face .

The first twenty minutes were standard and she answered all the questions she was asked plainly because the one thing life had thought her so far was that, the best thing to do in a room full of skeptics was to simply tell the truth about what they knew. She knew a great deal, so she let it speak for itself.

Raymond on his end, said very little. Since the interview began, he asked only three questions unhurriedly like a man who had been listening well enough to find the missing gaps.

The first question tried to know what methods she intended to use for identifying structural failure in a company with multiple revenue streams. The second was about how she would approach resistance from department heads who had been doing things a particular way for a long time.

All of which she answered perfectly but the third question was different.

"This job listing has been up for the past three weeks buy you just applied on a Tuesday evening. Why? What changed?" He asked, meeting her gaze.

The boardroom was very quiet as the other two panel members looked up with lost expressions on their faces.

Heather held his gaze for a moment before she began. "You're right… I had just decided that waiting for better options was costing me more than taking the available options"

"Fair enough, Thank you Josephine, that would be all for now." he said, with a brief smile on his face and made a note.

She nodded, picked up her and excused herself.

"Clear her references," he said, turning to look at his panel. "I want an offer handed to her by the end of the day."

He didn't wait for their response.