Chapter 2 - The Dossier
The morning sun filtered weakly through the tall windows of the farmhouse study, casting long, dusty shafts of light across the glass top of Eleanor’s desk. By precisely 7:59 AM, the encrypted notification chime pinged softly from her terminal.
A digital folder blinked on the screen: CONFIDENTIAL - INTERNAL AFFAIRS & PERFORMANCE REVIEW: BRITTANY MORALES.
Eleanor adjusted her reading glasses, settled back into her chair, and began to read. What she found wasn't merely disappointing; it was a masterclass in corporate toxicity.
For over a year, store managers had quietly documented Brittany’s erratic and entitled behavior. Because the downtown flagship was her pride and joy—the historic store where she and Arthur had sold their very first hand-stitched silk scarves in 1984—Eleanor maintained a personal interest in its day-to-day operations, though few employees knew she was anything more than a shadowy absentee board member referred to only as "The Founder." Most staff assumed the company was run by an anonymous board of directors or a faceless holding corporation.
Brittany, according to the internal logs, had weaponized her position to terrorize junior staff and humiliate shoppers who didn't conform to her superficial aesthetic standards. There were multiple logged incidents of Brittany openly rolling her eyes when older women walked into the boutique dressed in comfortable, unbranded clothing. One particularly damning report from three months prior detailed an incident where Brittany had actively waved off an elderly woman looking to purchase a high-end cashmere wrap, sneering that the customer "would probably ruin the weave with mothballs."
That customer had eventually walked out without buying anything. Had Brittany checked the woman’s loyalty profile, she would have seen that the "shabby" shopper was the wife of a European tech billionaire who routinely dropped six figures on seasonal collections.
More concerning was Brittany’s work ethic. Security badge logs revealed that she spent an average of two and a half hours per shift locked in the employee lounge scrolling through social media or taking mirror selfies in designer merchandise she had no intention of purchasing. She had falsified her sales reports twice to claim commission on transactions handled by her junior colleagues, and she had bullied a part-time stock clerk to tears over a misplaced garment bag just last week.
Eleanor scrolled down to the final page of the dossier. There, attached as an appendix, was an internal email thread between Brittany and a shift supervisor where Brittany boasted about her upcoming promotion to assistant store manager—a promotion that the regional director had explicitly vetoed due to her poor performance reviews.
Eleanor closed the file. She sat in silence for a moment, her fingers lightly tapping against the polished wood of the desk.
"You build a house out of stone and care," she murmured quietly to the empty room, her gaze drifting to a framed photograph of Arthur smiling beneath an old oak tree, "only to watch someone try to burn it down with a box of matches."
She picked up her phone and dialed Marcus Vance, the regional director of retail operations for the Western Seaboard. Marcus was a man who lived and breathed corporate metrics, a seasoned veteran of the luxury fashion industry who had spent twenty years climbing the ranks under Eleanor’s exacting supervision. He knew the brand rules inside and out, and he treated Eleanor with a reverence bordering on religious devotion.
"Marcus," Eleanor said the moment the line connected.
"Mrs. Reed," Marcus answered immediately, his voice professional yet laced with solemn respect. "Again, please accept my deepest condolences for the loss of Mr. Reed. The entire regional management team is holding you in our thoughts."
"Thank you, Marcus. I appreciate that," Eleanor replied smoothly, wasting no time. "I trust you received the directive regarding Brittany Morales?"
There was a brief pause on the other end of the line, the sound of digital pages rustling. When Marcus spoke again, his voice had dropped several degrees, turning ice-cold.
"I did, Mrs. Reed. I've personally reviewed her file, along with the floor manager’s logs and security footage from the past three months. Frankly, I'm appalled. I had no idea this level of misconduct was slipping through at the flagship. Her behavior is a direct violation of our core corporate values."
"It’s more than a violation, Marcus," Eleanor said quietly. "It’s a symptom of rot. If we allow people who despise our clientele to represent our name on the sales floor, we lose everything Arthur and I spent forty years building."
"What are your orders, Mrs. Reed?" Marcus asked without hesitation. "Shall I have HR draft a termination for cause? We can have her badge deactivated by noon."
"No," Eleanor said, a faint, cold edge of steel entering her tone. "Not yet. I want to handle this personally. I’m going down to the flagship boutique this Friday morning. I want to see how she interacts with customers when she believes she has absolute impunity."
"Understood," Marcus replied instantly. "How would you like me to position myself? Shall I secure the private boardroom upstairs?"
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"Just go about your normal business schedule, Marcus," Eleanor instructed. "Be on site by ten o'clock. When I give the signal, you and the general manager will join us on the floor."
"Consider it done, Founder Reed," Marcus said.
