“Of course, we all slow down a bit as we get older,” Nolan said, his voice a slick poison of condescension that filled the silent ballroom.
The screen behind him held a particularly cruel photo, a candid shot of me looking utterly exhausted, magnified ten feet tall for the pitying eyes of my colleagues.
He was delivering the eulogy for my relevance, burying thirty years of work under a pile of cheap jokes and ageist insults. His smile was a smug, punchable thing. He thought he had won.
What Nolan didn’t realize was that I had a last-minute addition for his slideshow, and the corporate surveillance system he’d personally championed was about to broadcast his career-ending crimes to everyone in the room.
The Welcome Mat and the Trap Door
The email subject line was “Let’s Give Imani a Send-Off for the Ages!” and my stomach immediately clenched. It was from Nolan. Of course, it was from Nolan. He’d “volunteered” to organize my retirement party, a move so transparently political it was almost impressive. For thirty years, I’d built the Operations department at Veridian Tech from a two-person chaos engine into a finely-tuned machine. Now, I was packing it all into cardboard boxes, and Nolan was planning the party.
“He’s organizing a roast,” I said to my husband, Mark, that evening, swirling the wine in my glass. The setting sun cast long shadows across our kitchen island. “He actually used the word ‘roast.’ Isn’t that a little… aggressive for a corporate function?”
Mark flipped a page in his book, not looking up. “He’s just trying to score points, honey. Wants everyone to see him as the fun, new leader.” He paused. “You still haven’t heard from David about the consulting gig?”
That was the real sticking point. I was ready to leave the 60-hour weeks behind, but I wasn’t ready to let go completely. David Chen, our CFO and my long-time boss, had floated the idea of a retainer contract—I’d consult on major projects, guide the transition. It was the perfect soft landing. But the official offer hadn’t materialized, and Nolan was positioning himself not just as my successor, but as the only voice the department would need going forward.
A new email pinged on my phone. Nolan again. *“Hey Imani! For the roast, got any funny stories about old tech? Like, fax machine fiascos or dial-up disasters? Want to make sure we capture your… full history. ;)”* The winky-face emoji felt like a tiny, digital shiv.
“He’s mining for jokes about how old I am,” I said, showing Mark the phone.
He finally looked up, a small frown creasing his brow. “That guy’s a weasel, Im. Just smile, take the gold watch, and let’s go to Italy. The contract will come through.” I wanted to believe him, but the knot in my stomach was tightening. Nolan wasn’t just a weasel; he was a weasel with a microphone and a PowerPoint presentation, and I had a terrible feeling he was building a trap door right under my legacy.
Goodbyes and Leading Questions
My office looked like a library after an earthquake. Books in piles, plaques leaning against the wall, a ficus tree I’d somehow kept alive since the dot-com bubble looking forlorn in the corner. My team members drifted in and out all day, offering hugs and sharing memories. It was sweet, and deeply sad. I felt like a ghost haunting my own life.
Around three, Nolan appeared in the doorway, leaning against the frame with a practiced casualness. He was wearing one of his too-tight polo shirts, the kind that made him look like a sausage casing with a spreadsheet addiction.
“Hey, champ. Getting sentimental?” he asked, a Chesire Cat grin plastered on his face.
“Just trying to figure out how to pack three decades of stress into a single box,” I quipped, not missing a beat.
He chuckled, a dry, rustling sound. “Listen, about Friday. I’m putting together a little slideshow. A ‘Through the Years’ type of thing. I was hoping you could help. Any… particularly memorable moments? You know, the funny stuff. The time the server farm flooded? Or that brutal all-nighter before the Q4 launch in ’08?” His questions were surgical, probing for moments of failure, of chaos. He wasn’t looking for fond memories; he was looking for ammunition.
“I think I’ll leave the trip down memory lane to you, Nolan,” I said, turning back to a stack of binders. “Surprise me.” The words were a dare.
“Oh, I plan to,” he said, the grin widening. He lingered for a moment, his eyes scanning the contents of my office as if he were measuring for new curtains. “It’s going to be a night no one will forget. Especially you.” The threat was veiled, but it hung in the air long after he’d sauntered away, leaving me with a cold dread and a half-packed box of obsolete charging cables.
The Vanguard Anomaly
The official handover was with Sarah Jenkins, a sharp, no-nonsense director I’d been mentoring for years. She was the one I’d recommended for my job, a fact that clearly chafed Nolan every single day. We were going through the quarterly vendor audits, a process I could do in my sleep, when a line item caught my eye.
“Vanguard Logistics,” I murmured, tapping the screen. “Their new contract rate is fifteen percent higher than last quarter. Did they give a reason for the spike?”
Sarah leaned in, her brow furrowed. “Nolan handled that negotiation. He said they were integrating a new AI-driven tracking system that justified the cost. Said it would streamline our supply chain and save us money in the long run.”
It sounded plausible. Corporate buzzwords were Nolan’s native tongue. But something felt off. I knew Vanguard’s CEO. He was a tough negotiator, but he wasn’t greedy. A fifteen percent jump in a single quarter was unheard of without a massive service expansion. I pulled up the contract details. The service-level agreement was virtually identical to the previous one. The “AI-driven system” was mentioned, but with vague language and no performance metrics attached. It was a shell.
“Nolan pushed this through?” I asked.
“Pushed it hard,” Sarah confirmed. “Said you’d already given it a preliminary sign-off before your retirement was announced. I just finalized the paperwork.”
I had absolutely not given it a sign-off. I hadn’t even seen the preliminary proposal. Nolan had used my impending departure as cover. It was sloppy, arrogant, and it lit a small, angry fire in my gut. It was just one contract, a drop in the bucket of Veridian’s budget, but it was a lie. And it had my ghost-signature on it. I made a mental note. It was probably nothing, just Nolan puffing his chest. But my instincts, honed over thirty years of sniffing out operational bullshit, were screaming.
Armor and Instincts
The dress was a deep cobalt blue. Simple, elegant, professional. Armor. Mark zipped it up for me, his hands warm on my back. “You look like a CEO,” he said, kissing my shoulder.
“I feel like I’m heading to my own funeral,” I mumbled, staring at my reflection. The woman in the mirror looked tired. The excitement for what came next was buried under a thick layer of anxiety about the party. About Nolan. The Vanguard contract thing had been gnawing at me all day.
“It’s one night,” Mark said, his voice a comforting rumble. “A few bad jokes, some lukewarm chicken, and then we’re free. Italy, remember? Pasta and Vespas.”
I forced a smile. “Right. Pasta and Vespas.” But I couldn’t shake the feeling that Nolan’s “roast” was more than just a few bad jokes. It felt like a calculated demolition. He wasn’t just trying to make himself look good; he was trying to make me look bad, to retroactively invalidate my career so he could step into a void of his own making.
After Mark went to bed, I found myself back in my home office, the glow of the laptop casting shadows on the packed boxes around me. I couldn’t let it go. On a whim, I logged into the company’s remote server one last time. My credentials were still active until midnight. I pulled up the Vanguard files again, my fingers flying across the keyboard. This wasn’t about the money anymore. It was about the lie. It was about Nolan using my name to grease his own path. My thirty-year legacy wasn’t going to be a welcome mat for that smug bastard to wipe his feet on. I was going to find out what was really going on, even if it was the last thing I did at Veridian Tech.
Midnight Audit
The digital rabbit hole was deep. I started with Nolan’s email archives, searching for any mention of “Vanguard.” The initial chain was exactly as Sarah had described. Nolan championed the new contract, citing the nebulous AI upgrade and attaching a forged document with my digital signature indicating preliminary approval. The man had balls, I’ll give him that.
But then I found something else. A separate, encrypted thread between Nolan and a personal email address for Vanguard’s VP of Sales, a guy named Rick. The subject lines were innocuous—”Following Up,” “Checking In”—but the timing was suspicious. Each email was sent just before or after a major step in the contract negotiation. My access didn’t let me see the content of the encrypted messages, just the metadata. It was a dead end, but a telling one.
My mind raced. Nolan was good at covering his tracks, but he was also lazy. He always opted for the path of least resistance. I switched my search from the email server to the corporate expense reports. I cross-referenced Nolan’s calendar with his filed expenses for the past six months. And there it was. A pattern.
Every few weeks, he had a “Working Lunch with Prospective Client” at the same high-end steakhouse downtown. The receipts were always for two people, always just over the threshold requiring a second level of approval, but never high enough to trigger a major flag. On their own, they meant nothing. But when I laid them over the dates of the Vanguard contract negotiation, they lined up perfectly. He wasn’t meeting with a prospective client. He was being wined and dined by Vanguard. He was on the take. It was circumstantial, but the picture it painted was damning. Still, it wasn’t proof. It was just my word against his.
The Off-the-Record Tip
My frustration was mounting. I had a strong suspicion, a pile of circumstantial evidence, but nothing concrete. I needed more. I thought about who I could trust, who would have insight into the industry’s backchannels. The name that came to mind was Frank Gable. Frank was the regional manager for one of our other logistics carriers, a competitor of Vanguard. We’d worked together for nearly twenty years. He was old-school, a straight-shooter.
I hesitated, looking at the clock. It was nearly 1 a.m. But I knew Frank was an early riser. I sent him a text: *“You up for a weird, off-the-record question?”*
My phone buzzed a minute later. *“For you, Imani? Always. What’s up?”*
I called him. Keeping my voice low, I explained that I was doing a final review and saw Vanguard’s new rates. I asked him, purely from a market perspective, if a fifteen percent hike for a minor tech upgrade sounded right to him.
Frank let out a low whistle. “Fifteen percent? For their so-called ‘AI’ platform? That’s highway robbery, Imani. Everyone in the business knows that’s just marketing fluff. We bid on that contract, you know. Came in ten percent lower with a better service guarantee and still lost.” He paused. “Word on the street is there’s a new… ‘consulting fee’ required to get your foot in the door at Veridian these days. That your guy Nolan is the gatekeeper.”
My blood ran cold. It wasn’t just a rumor; it was common knowledge among our vendors. “A consulting fee?” I repeated, my voice barely a whisper.
“Yeah,” Frank said, his tone turning cautious. “Look, I shouldn’t be saying this, but it’s you. People are saying you have to make sure Nolan is ‘taken care of’ if you want your proposal to even get a serious look. That’s why we didn’t even bother with a counter-offer. We don’t play that game.”
He’d said it. He’d put a name to the corruption. My department, the one I’d built on a foundation of integrity and efficiency, was being treated like a private ATM by the man who was about to roast me in front of my entire company. The anger was so pure, so hot, it burned away all my fatigue.
About the Author
