The Fight (Savage CEO #1)

Chapter One

Garrett

The file said three hundred and forty jobs.

Garrett Knox had read that number on the plane from New York, somewhere over Lake Erie, and he had felt nothing particular about it.

Numbers were not people. Numbers were a variable in an equation, and the equation, in this case, was straightforward: Meridian Steel was carrying forty-two million in debt, its plant equipment was fourteen years past optimal, its pension obligations were underfunded by eleven million, and the Chicago market had moved.

The math did not care about the number of people attached to it. The math simply was.

He arrived at O'Hare at six-forty in the morning and took a car directly to the South Side.

No hotel stop. He did not see the point of hotels before a first meeting.

You walked in looking like you had slept somewhere else and the room adjusted accordingly, which was useful, but only if you needed the adjustment. Garrett rarely did.

He used the forty-five minutes to walk the floor.

The plant manager, a man named Dubowski, had offered to escort him.

Garrett had declined. He preferred to look at machinery without someone explaining it to him, because the explaining was never about the machinery.

It was about the relationship the person had to the machinery, and that relationship was not relevant to the assessment.

What was relevant was what he could see: a press line that was newer than it had any right to be given the debt load, which meant someone had been borrowing to invest rather than to survive.

A secondary furnace that had been shut down and not restarted.

A section of the floor that was cleaner than the rest, recently swept, which meant they had known he was coming and had made choices about what to show him.

He took photographs of three things. He wrote four notes. He was back in the conference room by seven fifty-five.

The table seated twelve. Dubowski was there with two of his operations people and a lawyer from a firm Garrett recognised.

The union had sent two men, both older, both wearing the same expression of careful watchfulness that experienced union reps wore to these meetings.

There was a gap at the table between the operations people and the union side that no one had filled in.

Garrett sat at the head. He set his phone face down and did not open his file.

"Mr. Knox." Dubowski extended a hand across the table. "Thank you for making the trip."

"Of course," Garrett said. He shook the hand. He sat.

"We've prepared an overview of the current operational status, the workforce numbers, the contractual obligations." Dubowski was already reaching for a folder.

"I've read it," Garrett said.

A pause. "All of it?"

"Yes."

Dubowski set the folder back down.

The lawyer, whose name Garrett had not caught, cleared his throat. "Then perhaps we can move directly to the question of the timeline for the restructuring."

"Yes," Garrett said. "That's what I'd like to discuss."

The door opened.

He did not look up immediately. He had learned a long time ago that the person who looked up when a door opened gave something away, and he had learned to be careful about what he gave away.

So he heard the footsteps before he turned, and by the time he turned he had already formed a first impression from the sound alone: quick, not hurried.

Someone who moved at their own pace regardless of the room they were entering.

The woman who had come through the door was not what he had been expecting.

He had not, technically, been expecting anyone, which was already a failure of preparation on his part.

She was in her early thirties, dark-haired, and she was carrying a canvas bag over one shoulder and a paper cup of coffee in her other hand, and she did not apologise for being three minutes late.

She sat down in the gap between the operations people and the union side. She set the coffee on the table. She looked at Garrett.

He looked back.

"Cait Doyle," she said. "Chicago Workers Alliance. I represent the hourly workforce at this facility."

"Garrett Knox. Ashford Meridian."

"I know who you are," she said. Not hostile. Factual. She opened the canvas bag and took out a folder of her own, which was thicker than anyone else's at the table and had handwritten tabs on the dividers. "I've read your firm's last six restructuring reports. I know your methodology."

Something shifted in the room. The operations people had gone still. The two union men exchanged a look. Dubowski's lawyer was looking at his phone under the table, which meant he was either checking something or pretending to.

"Good," Garrett said.

"Good," she agreed. She pulled one sheet from the folder and slid it across the table to him.

"Then we can skip the part where you explain to me that this is about market forces and start with the part where you explain to me why your firm's methodology has consistently underestimated retraining cost offsets by an average of eighteen percent across comparable facilities in the last four years. "

Garrett looked at the sheet. It was a table. His firm's numbers on the left, her adjusted numbers on the right, with citations in the margins. The citations were real. He recognised two of them.

He looked up.

"That's a Bureau of Labour Statistics methodology," he said.

"It is."

"We use a different model."

"I know. Your model is faster." She picked up her coffee. "Mine is more accurate."

The room was very quiet. Outside, somewhere on the plant floor, something mechanical made a sound and then stopped.

Garrett set the sheet down. He picked up his pen. He did not write anything yet. "What's your ask, Ms. Doyle?"

"I don't have an ask. I have a position.

" She put the coffee down. "Three hundred and forty jobs.

Your current plan closes the facility in ninety days and offers standard severance under the WARN Act minimum.

My position is that that plan does not account for the retraining value, the community economic impact, or the fact that this facility's newest press line, which you photographed this morning at seven twenty-two, is two years old and fully depreciated against a projected twelve-year useful life. "

He had photographed the press line at seven twenty-two. He had not seen anyone watching him.

He put the pen down.

"You have someone on the floor," he said.

"I have members on the floor," she said. "They work here. It's their floor."