The board meeting ran two hours.
Every question was really one question.
What is the omega to you and why is he in this building.
They didn't ask it that way, of course.
They never did.
They asked about optics.
About liability.
About the engagement.
About what message it sent to investors when the heir to Walker Corporation publicly aligned himself with a person who was currently the subject of a Victor Hale investigation.
They asked it six different ways over two hours.
Kendrick answered each version the same way.
Calmly.
With numbers.
With liability assessments and public relations framing and the specific vocabulary of men who understood that everything, in the end, came down to risk management.
He was good at this.
He had been performing competence for powerful people since he was fourteen years old and his father had brought him into his first board meeting and told him afterward: you'll sit in that room one day. Act like you already belong there.
