Chapter 7: The Board
The emergency session of the board convened at 2:00 p.m. the same day.
I presented the package myself. No intermediaries, no softened language. The financial irregularities were laid out in chronological order with the supporting wire confirmations and subsidiary ledger extracts. The intellectual-property exposure followed, mapped against the restricted databases and the message threads recovered from the imaged drives. The personal misconduct was included only to the extent that it intersected with corporate access and abuse of position. The medical file remained in a separate, sealed addendum marked for personal legal action; the board did not require those details to understand that Kenneth Rollins had treated the company as an extractable asset and the marriage as his credential.
The room was silent when I finished.
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Our lead independent director spoke first. The questions that followed were precise: timeline of discovery, chain of custody on the devices, status of Kenneth’s access, and the immediate risk to clients whose information appeared in the transferred materials. I answered each without elaboration. By 3:40 p.m. the board had authorized a full internal investigation under outside counsel, confirmed the freeze on Kenneth’s credentials and any remaining discretionary authorities, and directed that a formal referral be prepared for law enforcement regarding the apparent theft of proprietary information.
I left the conference room with the authority I had always held as CFO now fully aligned with the evidence. The obedient-wife version of me had no further role in the building.
