The data exports. My original drafts with the risk flags intact. The timestamps. The emails where I’d raised the Castellin problem in writing, weeks before the renewal deadline. All of it, saved.
Friday, 7:15 in the evening. A knock on my door. I opened it to find Grant standing in my hallway holding a bottle of wine like we were old friends.
He came inside before I could decide whether to let him. And then he said it: Castellin hadn’t signed. The renewal was stalled. The client had questions about the numbers — questions nobody upstairs could answer, because the only person who understood the analysis was the one they’d fired.
He wanted to “get aligned.” That was his word. Aligned. As in: let’s agree on a version of the story where my original warnings never existed, where the edited report was the real one, and where the only name on it — mine — would take the fall if the client walked.