Arthur Blackwood ignored Gavin. He looked at Jaime with a newfound respect. He saw the fire in her eyes. The same fire he had had when he was thirty. “What is your price, Miss Jenkins?” Arthur asked. “Five million? Ten?” Jaime looked at Derek. He was staring at his hands, defeated. She looked at Gavin. He was red-faced, veins bulging in his neck. “I don’t want a payout,” Jaime said. “I want a position.” The declaration hung in the air. “A position?” Gavin laughed, a harsh barking sound. “You want a job? Fine. We’ll make you VP of mathematics. We’ll give you a cubicle in the basement. Now give us the equation.” “Shut up, Gavin,” Arthur Blackwood said. He did not raise his voice, but the command was absolute. Gavin snapped his mouth shut. Arthur turned back to Jaime. “Go on.”
“I want Derek’s job,” Jaime said. Derek’s head snapped up. “Excuse me?” “You’re incompetent, Derek,” Jaime said, stating it as a fact, not an insult. “You’re a good salesman, but you don’t understand the product. You let your investors bully you into cutting corners. You removed safety protocols to meet a deadline. You are a liability.” She turned to the board. “And I want Gavin Reed off the board.” “You can’t do that,” Gavin screamed, jumping to his feet. “I founded the seed round. I own twenty percent of this company.” “Which is currently worth zero,” Robert Patterson interjected smoothly. “Unless Miss Jenkins fixes the product. If she walks, Aerologics files for Chapter 11 by Monday. Your twenty percent becomes a tax write-off. If you step down and she fixes it, the stock recovers. You keep your shares, but you lose your seat. You get to be rich, Mr. Reed, but you don’t get to be powerful. That is the trade.”
Jaime stepped forward, placing her hands on the mahogany table. She leaned in toward Gavin. “You treated me like furniture,” she said quietly. “You laughed at me. You stole from me. And you told me I had no leverage. Well, I’m the one holding the eraser now.” Gavin looked around the room. He looked for support. But the board members were avoiding his gaze. They were calculating. They were money people. They did not care about Gavin’s ego. They cared about their portfolios.
“I move for a vote,” one of the female board members said. “Motion to remove Derek Sterling as CEO for cause. Gross negligence regarding the crash. Motion to accept Gavin Reed’s resignation from the board, effective immediately.” “I didn’t resign,” Gavin shouted. “You will,” Arthur Blackwood said. “If you want to avoid a lawsuit for fraud. We sold stock based on a demo you knew was flawed. That’s prison time, Gavin. Unless we can frame this as a transition of leadership and fix the tech.” Gavin slumped back into his chair. The fight went out of him. He looked small. “And the replacement?” Arthur asked, looking at Jaime. “You have no management experience, Miss Jenkins. You serve coffee.”
“I manage chaos,” Jaime said. “I managed a café during the morning rush with a broken espresso machine and three staff missing. That’s logistics. I managed a household with zero income and a sick parent. That’s budget optimization. And I fixed your billion-dollar algorithm in three minutes on a napkin while you were hyperventilating. That’s leadership.” She paused. “I don’t need to know how to run a board meeting, Mr. Blackwood. I need to know how to make the product work. I can hire people to wear suits and shake hands. But none of you can do what I do.”