Chapter 10: The Referral and the Record
In the second week the formal referral package left the building.
Outside counsel delivered the trade-secret and financial materials to the appropriate authorities with the chain-of-custody documentation intact. I did not attend the handoff. My role was to ensure the evidence was complete, not to perform outrage for an audience. The internal investigation continued in parallel, interviewing the small number of employees whose work had intersected with the compromised files. No widespread conspiracy emerged. What emerged was a single executive who had treated restricted information as inventory and the CFO’s marriage as his credential for removing it.
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Kenneth’s counsel shifted tone. The new correspondence emphasized cooperation, the possibility of restitution discussions, and a request that the company consider the “human complexity” of a marriage in crisis. General counsel answered with the same procedural language that had governed every step since the safe was opened: access remained frozen, the investigation remained active, and any personal claims belonged in the separate civil action already filed. I was copied on the exchange and added nothing. The record did not require my commentary.
At home—my own residence again, the Cherry Hills house already under the control of the separation process—I slept in unbroken stretches for the first time in months. The industrial adhesive had done its narrow work. The systems that followed were doing the rest.
