Chapter 5 - Richard Did Not Fire Him
Monday morning, Asteron placed Marcus on paid administrative leave.
Not because Richard had decided he was a bad husband.
The wedding incident involved multiple employees, clients and press attendees.
Video had circulated publicly.
Marcus had also repeatedly invoked Richard’s presence during the confrontation.
The company needed to determine whether workplace resources or professional authority had been mixed into personal conduct.
An outside review followed.
It found no secret corporate fraud.
No hidden harassment empire.
No reason to destroy Marcus’s career.
What it did find was a leadership problem.
Three employees said Marcus could become intensely image-conscious under pressure.
One woman reported he once blocked a conference-room exit during a heated project discussion until she finished answering him.
He had not touched her.
Still inappropriate.
Another colleague described Marcus as:
“Very good until he thinks he’s losing the room.”
That sentence stayed with me.
The review concluded he had not committed a terminable workplace offense based on the evidence available.
But his promotion was paused.
He returned after six weeks under leadership coaching and with a different reporting structure.
Some people online called that weak.
Others wanted Richard to fire him because he shoved his wife.
I had a strange reaction.
I did not want Marcus’s employer converting my marriage into a punishment machine.
If work issues existed, investigate them.
If not, do not invent them.
My father agreed.
That surprised me.
“Do you want him fired?” I asked.
“No.”
“After what he did?”
Dad looked at me.
“Employment is not my revenge instrument.”
That was the father I wished I had at seventeen.
Then he added:
“And Richard doesn’t work for me anymore.”
Good.
Marcus eventually asked for a meeting with Richard.
Richard agreed.
Marcus later told me what happened.
Richard said:
“You kept talking about me as though I were the most important person in that room.”
Marcus answered:
“I know.”
Richard said:
“I wasn’t.”
That was all.
No grand speech.
Marcus cried afterward.
Because he had spent years assuming powerful men were always the real audience.
May you like
That belief came from somewhere.
And Beatrice had helped put it there.
