Page 42 of The Authenticity Clause
“I’m not talking about Anya,” Sarah shot back, her gaze sharp and unyielding. “I’m talking about David. You just spent ten minutes in a marketing meeting systematically dismantling every idea he presented, not with constructive criticism, but with a kind of cold, dismissive cruelty I haven't seen from you since we were fighting for our first round of funding. He’s currently in the breakroom trying to decide if he should update his resume or just start crying into a bag of pretzels.”
The ideas were suboptimal,Julian’s internal monologue supplied.Emotional responses are irrelevant to performance metrics.
“The proposals were not up to standard,” Julian said aloud, his voice even. “My feedback was direct and accurate.”
“Your feedback was a character assassination,” Sarah countered, her voice rising. “This isn't about standards, Julian. This is about you. You have become a walking, talking black hole of despair, and you’re dragging the entire agency down with you. This stops. Today.”
The accusation was so direct, so unprofessional, that it momentarily stunned him. He could feel a cold, defensive anger coiling in his gut. “I am running my company. My personal disposition is irrelevant.”
“Bullshit,” she snapped, the word cracking like a whip in the silent, minimalist office. “Your personal disposition is poisoning the well. Our turnover rate for the last month is zero because people are too scared to even look for other jobs, convinced you’ll somehow find out and smite them from across the city. The Northwind project was a success, but there has been no new,innovative work since. None. Because you’ve terrified everyone into only presenting the safest, most boring ideas imaginable. Because you have killed the chaos.”
The word hung in the air between them.Chaos.Leo’s word.
“The ‘chaos’ was predicated on a lie,” Julian said, his voice dropping, turning to ice. He was on solid ground now. This was the logic. This was the justification. “Leo Hayes was a fraud. He misrepresented his qualifications and experience. His dismissal was a professional necessity to protect the integrity of this agency. It was a non-negotiable, logical, and correct decision.”
He delivered the words like a verdict, a final, unassailable truth. He expected Sarah to falter, to concede the point. Business was business, after all.
She didn't. Instead, she laughed. A short, sharp, humorless sound.
“Oh, Julian,” she said, shaking her head, a look of profound pity on her face. “You are so brilliant and so, so stupid. Do you really think this is about his resume?”
“It is a matter of professional ethics,” he insisted, the anger tightening his jaw. “He lied.”
“Yes, he did!” she agreed, her voice ringing with frustration. “What he did was wrong and stupid and deeply unprofessional. But that’s not why you’re like this. That’s not why you walk around here like a ghost haunting his own life. You’re not grieving the loss of a competent employee, Julian. You’re grieving the loss of the only person who’s made you genuinely happy in the ten years I’ve known you.”
The words hit him like a physical blow. The air left his lungs in a sharp, involuntary gasp. His carefully constructed fortress of logic was being bombarded.
“That is an inappropriate and unfounded assumption,” he managed, but his voice was unsteady.
“Is it?” she challenged, leaning closer, her voice dropping to a low, intense whisper. “Let me make some more. You didn't just respect him. You didn't just like him. You were falling in love with him. Weren't you?”
He couldn't speak. The name was a raw, open wound in his chest, and she was pressing on it with a surgeon’s merciless precision. His silence was an answer.
Sarah’s expression softened, the anger replaced by a deep, aching sympathy. “I saw the way you looked at him,” she said gently. “I saw the way you changed when he was around. You were lighter. You were funnier. You were… happy. And when you found out he lied, you weren’t just disappointed in an employee. You were heartbroken. And you’ve been taking it out on everyone else ever since.”
“He betrayed my trust,” Julian finally whispered, the words tasting like ash. It was the core of it all. The truth he had been hiding from even himself.
“Yes, he did,” she said. “And it was a terrible thing to do. But what areyoudoing now? You’re hiding. You got hurt, so you ran right back inside your perfect, logical, miserable fortress and slammed the door shut. You’re punishing David and Anya and the entire damn company for a wound that only one person inflicted.”
She straightened up, her voice regaining its sharp, prosecutorial edge.
“You want to talk about lies? Let’s talk about the lie you’re living right now. The lie that you’re fine. The lie that this is just about business. The biggest lie of all? That you’re in control.” Shegestured around the perfect, sterile office. “This isn’t control, Julian. This is fear. You are a coward, hiding behind his rules and his systems because you are so terrified, so absolutely petrified, of feeling something real and getting hurt again.”
Every word was a battering ram against his defenses. The walls of justification, of logic, of anger—they were cracking, crumbling, turning to dust around him. He was left exposed, raw, with nothing but the ugly, painful truth of his own heart.
He loved Leo. He was heartbroken. And he was terrified.
The admission didn't come in a rush, but in a slow, agonizing surrender. He looked away from Sarah’s unflinching gaze, at his own hands, which were trembling slightly. He had been so sure he was right, so justified in his cold fury. But Sarah had held up a mirror, and the reflection was not of a strong, decisive leader. It was of a scared, broken man.
“What he did… was unforgivable,” he said, the words a last, desperate defense.
“Maybe,” Sarah conceded. “Or maybe it was the stupid, desperate act of a kid who was in over his head. I don’t know. I don’t care. What I care about is you. You have a choice to make, Julian.”
She walked to the door, her intervention complete. She paused, her hand on the handle, and looked back at him, her expression no longer angry, just deeply, profoundly sad.
“You can stay in here, in your safe, perfect, miserable fortress, and let this eat you alive. You can continue to be a black hole of despair until there’s nothing left of the good man I know you are.”
She let the words hang in the air for a beat.
