“Good.”
He blinks. “Sir?”
“I’m stepping down. I’ll present my own proposal.” I push the papers back toward him. “Draft this.”
When he hears what I have to say, his pen freezes mid-note. “Mr. Falk, that’s corporate suicide.”
I speak between gritted teeth. “No. That’s actually doing the right fucking thing for once.”
He doesn’t understand.
None of them will.
But she does.
And that’s all that matters.
It’s New Year’s Eve. I wanted to spend it with her, fly to Boulder or have her come to Manhattan, but she had lab commitments and I had back-to-back meetings with the legal team. So we celebrate remotely instead.
Midnight Mountain Time, I’m alone in my penthouse with champagne while she’s in her tiny apartment with cheap wine, and we count down together over video. She kisses her screen. I kiss mine. It’s ridiculous and perfect and I’ve never felt less alone on New Year’s Eve.
I video call Sorrel twice daily thereafter, and those calls are the highlight of my day.
She shows me her lab results, tiny petri dishes with mycorrhizal networks spreading like neural pathways. I show her my proposal documents. She makes corrections in the margins, questions my timeline, pushes me to commit more resources.
“This section is too vague,” she says, tapping her screen. “If you’re serious about restoration, you need measurable outcomes. Soil quality benchmarks. Biodiversity indices. Not just throwing money at the problem.”
Fuck, I love watching her think.
Her roommates think she’s lost her mind. My lawyers think I’m committing professional suicide.
Neither of us cares.
“What happened to your dissertation data?” I ask one time. “All that stuff you lost in the mountains?”
She sighs. “I had preliminary results backed up on the university server. Stuff I uploaded before the trip. It’s not everything, but my advisor thinks I can combine it with somenew spring data collection and still defend on schedule. It’ll be tight.”
“I can fund an extension if you need more time.”
Her voice softens. “That’s generous. But I don’t need it. I’m going to make this work.”
“Ever the stubborn one,” I comment.
“Resourceful,” she corrects. She smiles on the video call and it fucking wrecks me.
The days blur together. Meetings with lawyers. Calls with environmental consultants. Video chats with Sorrel where she sometimes falls asleep mid-conversation and I just watch her breathe for a few minutes before hanging up.
January sixth arrives like an execution date.
I enter the boardroom with my phone in my pocket. Sorrel’s on the line... she insisted on listening in for moral support.
The board members are already seated, looking smug and ready to tear me apart.
I don’t give them the chance. “I’m stepping down as CEO effective immediately.”
A few members look at each other, clearly surprised. My lawyer would have given them advance warning. I guess some of them didn’t actually believe it.
I hand out the proposal documents and continue. “I’m committing two billion dollars of my own money to the Brazilian cleanup and remediation. There will also be independent environmental oversight for all Falk Industries operations going forward. I’m staying on the board as a non-executive member. And I’m funding a five-year environmental restoration research initiative focused on healing the damage extraction industries cause.”
