Chapter Fourteen
The board meeting had been on Rafael’s calendar for three weeks, a routine quarterly review that should have taken ninety minutes and involved nothing more dramatic than revenue projections. He should have seen it coming. Looking back, all the signs had been there — Cassian’s unusual quiet the past few days, the way two board members he rarely heard from had scheduled separate, oddly timed calls with his general counsel.
He didn’t see it coming anyway, because he had spent the entire week focused on Kael’s school security and a woman who still hadn’t given him an answer, and that distraction cost him.
The meeting started normally enough. Quarterly numbers, a division head’s presentation on overseas shipping costs, nothing that raised Rafael’s guard. Then the chairman of
