Arthur: Terminated? By whose authority?! The board doesn't meet until next month!
Julian: The board met this morning at sunrise. I called the emergency quorum.
Arthur: You? You're just some punk in a fancy coat! You don't hold voting shares!
Julian: I hold seventy-five percent of the parent corporation's voting stock, Arthur. Which makes me your boss, your landlord, and your worst nightmare.
Arthur shook his head frantically, backing away until his knees hit the edge of a plastic sorting table. He looked around the warehouse for support, but every single worker was staring at him with undisguised satisfaction. Thomas slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position, leaning against a wooden pallet while Julian tossed him a clean handkerchief to wipe the ice water from his forehead.
Thomas: Thank you, young man. I thought he was going to break my jaw today.
Julian: No one is breaking anything on my watch, Thomas. Take your time getting to the medical office.
Arthur: You can't just fire me over a minor warehouse dispute! That man was insubordinate!
Julian: Ins subordination? He dropped a box of fish. You assaulted a sixty-year-old employee and tried to humiliate him in front of his peers.
Arthur: It's how we maintain discipline in this industry! You soft corporate elites don't understand real work!
Julian: Real work involves respect, integrity, and leadership—three things you haven't displayed since you took over this branch.
Arthur clenched his fists, his face flushing a deep, furious crimson as his career evaporated before his eyes. He had spent years ruling the fish market with fear, firing anyone who questioned his authority or audited his logistics reports. He had embezzled thousands of dollars from the employee pension fund, assuming the absentee owners would never notice the discrepancies in the shipping manifests.
Arthur: If you fire me, I'll take half these vendors with me! You won't have a single supplier by tomorrow morning!
Julian: Let them try. Every single vendor contract is tied to the parent company, not your personal handshake agreements.
Arthur: You're making a massive mistake. I know where every body is buried in this district.
Julian: Good. Because federal investigators are going to love digging up those exact bodies.
Julian pulled a thick manila folder out from under his arm, flipping open the cover to reveal columns of audited financial statements. He held the documents up so Arthur could see the highlighted discrepancies in red ink. Arthur swallowed hard, his throat going completely dry as he recognized his own forged signatures on the offshore wire transfer receipts.
Julian: Over four hundred thousand dollars missing from the logistics maintenance budget over twenty-four months.
Arthur: Those... those are forged! Anyone could have printed those!
Julian: My forensic accountants traced every single dollar straight to your personal bank account in the Caymans. The FBI cyber crimes unit has already secured the digital backups.