Solstice had begun looking at Bellweather months earlier, after its lenders started threatening to liquidate the company for parts.

And what we had found, looking closely, was a business worth saving: excellent engineers, valuable patents, a workforce that had stayed loyal through eighteen months of fear.

The company had almost everything it needed.

What it lacked — the one thing that had driven it to the edge of collapse — was honest executive control.

I said that to the room, not to Lucan, and I chose the words carefully, because I was aware that two hundred people were hearing, in real time, that the man they’d expected to be named president was in fact the reason their company had nearly died.

Many of them worked for Lucan directly.