Gordon’s voice on the other end had gone from a shout to something closer to pleading within a minute. He had returned from Alaska to a company that could not legally accept a single pound of hazardous waste. Three certifications gone. The state portal frozen. A six-point-two-million-dollar Montana contract suspended. And a new MBA manager standing in his office insisting he had done everything by the book, right up until the book turned out to be Section 14. “Diane,” Gordon said, “whatever Trevor did, we can fix this. Just tell me what you need.” I let a moment of silence sit on the line, the same silence Barbara had given me when she would not meet my eyes.

I told him the truth, calmly. The certifications were not company property. They were mine, earned under my name, maintained under my name, and legally deactivated the instant my employment ended, exactly as the contract he had signed guaranteed. Reactivating them was not a form Ironvale could file. It required me, personally, to petition each agency for reinstatement, and that only happened if I was employed by the company again. Then I said the sentence that made Gordon go very quiet. “So the real question, Gordon, isn’t who you fired. It’s what it’s going to cost to hire me back.”