That was his favorite reframe. Turn caution into weakness. Turn expertise into attitude. Turn anyone who could see trouble coming into the obstacle standing between leadership and its vision. It was a technique that worked reliably on people who mistook confidence for competence, and Derek had refined it into something close to an art form.

In the six months since the executive search firm had deposited him into the chief operating officer role, he had cut quality assurance hours, overridden engineers on material compatibility questions that deserved more than a five-minute conversation, pushed a lower-grade resin through a supplier change that no one with actual production experience would have approved, and celebrated each of these decisions as margin discipline. When defects reached customers, he blamed operators. When plant managers raised concerns, he accused them of resisting change. When I objected, I became difficult.

Nina slid a packet across the table. “If you sign here, we can process your final pay today.”Derek smiled, thin and satisfied. “You should actually be grateful. We’re not dragging this out with a performance improvement plan.”I looked at the paperwork. Effective immediately. Cause: failure to align with leadership expectations. It was a tidy phrase. Clean enough to mean almost anything, specific enough to mean nothing that could easily be contested. I recognized it as the kind of language that gets written when someone needs to manufacture a record rather than document one.

I did not pick up the pen.Something moved across his face, not quite fast enough to be called a flinch, more like an adjustment. He had expected something performative in return: defensive speech, maybe tears, possibly a plea. Men who fired people the way Derek did tended to prefer emotional responses from the other side of the table because emotion made them feel factual by comparison.I looked at Derek instead, gave him the smallest smile I had available, and said, “Fine. Fire me.”