Vanessa shot him a look. He didn't back down.
Derek scanned the room, measuring the shift. No one had shouted. Nothing scandalous had been exposed. But the balance in the room had moved, and everyone was recalibrating around it.
"Then we'll include Claire in the review," Derek said. "Assuming she agrees."
I thought about the technology, about how tools this powerful found their way into hiring systems, lending models, medical triage — decisions that shaped lives quietly, invisibly. Maybe someone needed to ask what exactly was being scaled.
"I'll review it," I said. "Independently."
The presentation started fifteen minutes later, and Derek was good — genuinely good. He knew the product, the market, the competition cold. But sitting beside my grandfather in the second row, I saw what I'd spent two years excusing: he skimmed past risk too fast, described human oversight like a nice-to-have instead of a responsibility.
Walter's only question, at the very end, was the sharpest one asked all day.
