“Lena, we’ll have to part ways.”
Gennady said it with that fatherly gentleness in his voice he switched on whenever he was about to pull another nasty trick.
He leaned back in his massive chair, fingers laced over his belly.
“We’ve decided the company needs a fresh look. New energy. You understand.”
I looked at him—at his well-groomed face, at the expensive tie I myself had helped him choose for the last corporate party.
Do I understand? Oh, yes. I understood that the investors had started talking about an independent audit, and he urgently needed to get rid of the only person who saw the whole picture. Me.
“I understand,” I answered evenly. “New energy—meaning Katya from reception, who mixes up debit and credit, but she’s twenty-two and laughs at all your jokes?”
He winced.
“It’s not about age, Lena. It’s just… your approach is a bit outdated. We’re treading water. We need a leap.”
A “leap.” He’d been repeating that word for the past six months. I’d built this firm with him from scratch, when we were huddled in a tiny office with peeling walls.
Now that the office had turned glossy, I apparently no longer fit the interior.
“Fine,” I rose lightly, feeling everything inside me go still. “When should I clear out my desk?”
My calm clearly threw him off. He’d expected tears, pleading, a scandal. All the things that would have given him the right to feel like a magnanimous victor.
“You can today. No rush. HR will prepare the paperwork. Severance, everything as it should be.”
I nodded and headed to the door. With my hand already on the handle, I turned back.
“You know, Gen, you’re right. The company really does need a leap. And I suppose I’ll provide it.”
He didn’t get it. He only smiled condescendingly.
In the open space where about fifteen people sat, the atmosphere was tense. Everyone knew everything.
The girls guiltily looked away. I went to my desk. A cardboard box was already sitting on it. Efficient.
I silently began putting my things into it: photos of the kids, my favorite mug, a stack of professional journals.
At the bottom of the box I placed a small bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley from my son—he’d brought it to me yesterday, just because.
Then I took out of my bag what I’d prepared in advance: twelve scarlet roses—one for each employee who had been with me all these years. And a thick black folder tied with cords.
I walked around the office, handing each person a flower.
I said quiet, simple words of thanks. Some hugged me, some cried. It felt like saying goodbye to family.
When I returned to my desk, only the folder remained in my hands. I took it, walked past my colleagues’ bewildered faces, and headed back to Gennady’s office.
The door was ajar. He was on the phone, laughing.
“Yes, the old guard is leaving… Yes, time to move on…”
I didn’t bother to knock. I just went in, came up to his desk, and laid the folder right on his papers.
He lifted a surprised look to me and covered the receiver with his palm.
“And what’s this?”
“This, Gen, is my parting gift. Instead of flowers. Here are all your ‘leaps’ from the last two years.”
“With figures, invoices, and dates. I think you’ll find it interesting to study at your leisure. Especially the section on ‘flexible methodologies’ for moving funds.”
I turned and walked out. I could feel his gaze burning first into the folder and then into my back.
He barked something into the phone and hung up. But I didn’t look back.
I walked across the entire office with an empty cardboard box in my hands. Now everyone was watching me.
In their eyes I read a mixture of fear and secret admiration. A scarlet rose stood on every desk. It looked like a field of poppies after a battle.
At the exit I was caught up by the head IT guy, Sergei. A quiet fellow Gennady considered just a function.
A year ago, when Gen tried to hit him with a hefty fine for a server failure that had happened through Gen’s own fault, I brought the evidence and defended the guy. He hadn’t forgotten.
“Yelena Petrovna,” he said softly, “if you need anything… any data… cloud backups… you know where to find me.”
I simply nodded in gratitude. It was the first voice of resistance.
At home my husband and my college-age son were waiting. They saw the box in my hands and understood everything.
“Well, did it work?” my husband asked, taking the box from me.
“The first step’s taken,” I said, slipping off my heels. “Now we wait.”
My son, a future lawyer, hugged me.
“Mom, you’re awesome. I reviewed all the documents you compiled once more. There’s no way to poke holes in it. Not a single auditor will.”
It was my son who helped me systematize all that chaos of double bookkeeping I’d been secretly gathering over the past year.
All evening I waited for a call. He didn’t call. I pictured him sitting in his office, leaf after leaf, and his well-groomed face slowly turning ashen.
The call came at eleven at night. I put it on speaker.
“Lena?”—there wasn’t a trace of the previous softness in his voice. Only poorly disguised panic. “I looked through your… papers. Is this a joke? Blackmail?”
“Why such harsh words, Gen?” I replied calmly. “This isn’t blackmail. It’s an audit. A gift.”
“You do realize I can destroy you? For slander! For theft of documents!”
“And do you realize that the originals of all those documents are no longer in my hands? And that if anything happens to me or my family, these papers will automatically go to several very interesting addresses? For example, to the tax office.
And to your main investors.”
Heavy breathing hung on the other end of the line.
“What do you want, Lena? Money? To come back to work?”
“I want justice, Gen. I want you to return everything you stole from the company. Down to the last kopeck. And for you to walk away yourself. Quietly.”
“You’re out of your mind!” he squealed. “This is my company!”
“It was OUR company,” I cut him off. “Until you decided your pocket mattered more. You have until tomorrow morning.”
“At nine sharp I expect news of your resignation. If there isn’t any, the folder starts its journey. Good night.”
I hung up without listening to his strangled curses.
The morning didn’t start with news. At nine fifteen I received an email from Gennady.
Urgent all-hands meeting at ten sharp. And a note addressed to me personally: “Come. We’ll see who beats whom.” He’d decided to go all-in.
“And what are you going to do?” my husband asked.
“Go, of course. You can’t miss your own premiere.”
I put on my best pantsuit. I walked into the office at 9:55. Everyone was already seated in the conference room.
Gennady stood by the big screen. Seeing me, he bared his teeth in a grin.
“Ah, here is our heroine. Please, Lena, have a seat. We’re all very interested to hear how a CFO, exposed for incompetence, tries to blackmail management.”
He began his speech. He spoke grandly about trust, which I, it turned out, had betrayed. He waved my folder around like a flag.
“Here! Look! This is a collection of slander from a person who can’t accept that her time has passed!”
The team was silent. People lowered their eyes. They were ashamed, but they were afraid. I waited until he paused to take a sip of water. And at that moment I took out my phone and sent Sergei a single word: “Go.”
In that very second the screen behind Gennady went dark, and then a scanned page appeared.
A payment order for nonexistent “consulting services” to a shell company registered to his mother-in-law.
Gennady froze. On the screen, one after another, documents began to roll: invoices for his personal trips, estimates for the renovation of his country house, screenshots of his messages where he discussed kickback amounts.
“Wh-what is this?” he stammered.
“This, Gennady, is called ‘data visualization,’” I said loudly and clearly, rising to my feet. “You talked about a leap?
Here it is. A leap for the company toward cleansing itself of theft. You said my approach was outdated? Perhaps. I really am old-fashioned. I believe you must not steal.”
I turned to my colleagues.
“I’m not asking you to pick a side. I’ve simply shown you the facts. Draw your own conclusions.”
I set my phone on the table.
“By the way, Gen, all of this is right now being forwarded to our investors’ inboxes. So I think resignation is the gentlest thing you can expect.”
Gennady looked at the screen, then at me. His face had gone ashen. All his bombast collapsed, leaving behind only a small, frightened man.
I turned and headed for the door.
Sergei stood up first. Then Olga, our best sales manager, whom Gennady had constantly tried to sideline. After her—Andrey, the lead analyst, whose reports Gen had passed off as his own.
And even quiet Marina from accounting, whom he’d driven to tears over any little thing. They weren’t leaving for me. They were leaving him.
Two days later an unfamiliar man called me. He introduced himself as a crisis manager hired by the investors.
He dryly informed me that Gennady had been removed, a review was underway at the company, and thanked me for the “information provided.” He offered me to return to “help stabilize the situation.”
“Thank you for the offer,” I replied. “But I prefer to build from scratch rather than shovel ruins.”
The first months weren’t easy. We sat in a tiny rented office that reminded me so much of the early days.
My husband, my son, Sergei, and Olga and I worked twelve hours a day. The name of our consulting firm, “Audit and Order,” justified itself completely.
We found our first clients, proving our professionalism not with words but with deeds.
Sometimes I drive past our old office.
The sign has changed there. The company didn’t survive the “leap” and the scandal.
I wasn’t fired because of age. I was fired because I was the mirror in which Gennady saw his incompetence and greed.
He simply tried to smash that mirror. But he forgot that the edges of the shards are much sharper.