[POV Sloane]
A company doesn’t become great by clinging to sentiment. It grows by making hard decisions. Fast ones. Ruthless ones.
That’s what I told the executive board my first day in charge.
Half of them nodded like trained seals. The other half avoided my eyes. And then there was her—Ari Winters, sitting with perfect posture, arms crossed, mouth pressed into a polite, tight line like she had a thousand things to say and was graciously holding every single one of them in.
She hated me. That much was clear.
Good. That made two of us.
Within forty-eight hours, I canceled three of Richard’s pet projects.
The community writing scholarship? Gone.
The underfunded high school internship program? Axed.
The free journalism bootcamp for inner-city kids? Cute—and a waste of money.
“Public goodwill builds trust,” Ari said the morning after the cuts were announced, standing in the doorway of my office like she owned the place. “You’re killing the soul of this company.”
I didn’t look up from my screen. “Public goodwill doesn’t pay the bills.”
She stepped inside without being invited—again.
“The numbers don’t agree with you. I can show you the engagement spikes tied to each of those programs. We gained subscribers from every story that came out of them.”
“That’s anecdotal data.”
“It’s real data.”
I finally glanced at her. “You’re still here?”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You told me the first day we met that if I was going to bulldoze the company, you wouldn’t stick around. Yet... here you are.”
Her jaw tightened. “Maybe I’m here to make sure you don’t do it alone.”
I leaned back in my chair, studying her. She was frustrated. Smart. Unshakably confident, which only made her more irritating.
The kind of person who said ‘no’ with a smile that somehow made it sound like a dare.
“Fine,” I said. “You want to be useful? I need five years’ worth of digital engagement metrics, department by department, by Friday morning. Full analytics, including demographic breakdowns.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That’s a four-day job.”
“You have two.”
“You’re joking.”
“Does it look like I’m joking?”
She didn’t answer. Just gave me one of those death stares she was getting good at, turned on her heel, and left without another word.
For the first time that morning, I smiled.
By Thursday, she handed me a full report. Color-coded, well-sourced, cross-referenced.
It was perfect. Of course it was. And I found myself disappointed. Because now I had no excuse to fire her.
Instead, I found smaller ways to test her. I rewrote her summaries with a red pen, tore apart her presentations in meetings, and reassigned projects without telling her.
She never cracked. Not once. She fought back—politely, firmly, always with that infuriating calm.
But she never broke. And damn it if I didn’t respect that more than I wanted to.
The tension came to a head during a quarterly strategy meeting with the full executive team.
I stood at the head of the table, pointing to a projection chart on the screen.
“Our educational division—magazine partnerships with schools, sponsored curriculum kits, workshops—it’s a sinkhole. High labor, low returns. We cut it, we save a million annually.”
There were a few cautious nods. No one dared to speak first.
Except her.
Ari flipped open a thin folder and slid it down the table toward me. “That ‘sinkhole’ helped secure five major government grants and increased subscriber retention in our 18–24 market by 12% over the past three years.”
I barely glanced at the folder. “The board doesn’t pay me to subsidize hobbies.”
“They pay you to think long-term. You’re killing an investment before it matures.”
My jaw tensed. “Thank you for your unsolicited insight, Miss Winters. We’ll proceed as planned.”
Her expression didn’t change. But the silence in the room was heavy. I dismissed the meeting ten minutes later. Back in my office, I actually read her report. Every damn word.
And she was right.
She was so right it made me furious. Because it meant I’d just dismissed her in front of a dozen senior staff for being more competent than me.
I tossed the report aside and stared out the window, jaw tight. She didn’t just challenge me. She outmaneuvered me. And worse?
I liked it.
* * *
That night, I stayed late. The building was nearly empty when I heard it—muffled voices echoing from the hallway.
I stepped out of my office and followed the sound to the lounge. The lights were off, but I could see her standing near the vending machines, frozen mid-step, phone pressed to her ear.
“No, Charlie,” she whispered. “They don’t know I’m still here. They found out I’m working at Wayne, but they don’t know the rest. I’m keeping it that way.”
My body went cold. She hadn’t seen me yet.
“Yeah, I know. Mother even once called the front desk pretending to be a potential advertiser.”
Pause.
“No, I’m not coming home. I can’t. Not until this year ends. I promised myself I’d finish what I started.”
Another pause.
“Yeah. He’s here. Just like we thought. Colder than I expected. Arrogant. Pretty sure he’d set the building on fire if it got him better press.”
I smirked. I might have taken offense—if she hadn’t been right.
The conversation continued, too low for me to catch. I slipped back to my office without making a sound. But her words stayed with me.
‘They don’t know I’m still here. I promised myself I’d finish what I started.’
What the hell did that mean?
The next day, I took a call in my father’s office. One of Richard’s longtime friends, a man named Julian Marks, was asking for an informal meeting to discuss continuing their foundation collaboration.
I hung up. Didn’t even let him finish.
I wasn’t interested in playing Richard’s games. I wasn’t him. And I wasn’t here to carry his torch.
I erased the callback note. I deleted two voicemails from another of his former partners. I told the staff we’d be “focusing on new strategic directions.”
The past was dead. Nostalgia didn’t scale. Still... as I stepped out of the office that afternoon, I caught her staring from down the hall.
Ari. Standing by the assistant desks, arms crossed, brows drawn. Eyes sharp and cold. She’d heard. Somehow, she always heard.
She could hate me all she wanted, but she wouldn’t stop me. No one would.