“Everyone’s locked out of the vendor archive. IT is imaging laptops. Greg’s office door is closed, and two people from legal are with him. Finance looks like a funeral home.”
I almost smiled.
Almost.
“Natalie, don’t use your work phone to call me.”
“I know. I’m not stupid.”
“You need to be careful.”
There was a pause.
Then her voice cracked.
“I have things too.”
My hand tightened around the mug.
“What kind of things?”
“Emails. Screenshots. Greg asked me to change dates on a safety training report last year. I thought it was just paperwork. But after Bedford…” She inhaled shakily. “I didn’t know who to tell.”
“Tell Dana.”
By the end of the week, three more employees had contacted my attorney.
By the end of the month, there were eight.
The company tried to contain the damage quietly. That was their first mistake.
They offered me a settlement two weeks after firing me. The figure was large enough to make my hands tremble when Dana slid the paper across the desk.
Three hundred thousand dollars.
Confidentiality required. No admission of wrongdoing. Return all documents. Withdraw complaints. Non-disparagement clause.
Dana watched my expression.
“That is more than nuisance value,” she said. “They are scared.”
I thought about my mother’s hospital bed in the living room. I thought about how she apologized every time I paid for another prescription. I thought about sitting beside her at night, answering Greg’s emails while she slept because I was terrified of losing the insurance that helped keep her alive.
Three hundred thousand dollars would have changed everything for me.
A year earlier, I might have accepted it.
But then I remembered Greg beside my cubicle.
This could have been more discreet.
I pushed the paper back.
“No.”
Halden & Price raised the offer to half a million.
Then seven hundred fifty thousand.