First Discoveries
Martha called me on a Tuesday evening, her voice practically vibrating with excitement. ‘Cathy, you need to come to my office. NOW.’ When I arrived, her desk was covered with papers, sticky notes, and printed emails.
‘Look at this,’ she said, sliding a document toward me. It was Becca’s personnel file, and what I saw made my jaw drop. There was no performance review. No HR sign-off.
Just a promotion form with CEO Greg Walters’ signature scrawled across the bottom.
‘This bypassed every company protocol,’ Martha explained, her eyes gleaming like she’d found buried treasure. ‘And that’s not all.’ She pulled up her laptop to show me a string of encrypted messages between Greg’s personal email and Becca’s.
They’d been careful, using coded language, but the timestamps matched perfectly with Becca’s meteoric rise and my sudden fall.
‘They thought encrypting would protect them,’ Martha said with a satisfied smirk, ‘but the subpoena covered ALL communication formats.’ I stared at the evidence, my heart pounding. This wasn’t just office politics or generational warfare.
This was corruption at the highest level.
‘So the “undisclosed reasons” HR mentioned…’ I started. Martha nodded grimly. ‘Exactly. They couldn’t discipline Becca because someone very powerful was protecting her.’ I felt dizzy with the implications. ‘But why?’ I asked.
Martha’s expression darkened. ‘That’s what we’re going to find out next. And Cathy? I think it’s going to be much worse than we imagined.
‘