The Grumpy CFO

Naomi Achebe was hired to fix a scandal she didn't cause, for a company that hadn't yet admitted what it did. Declan Fitzpatrick is the CFO whose signature is on every document the scandal touches. He didn't sign the deals. He also can't prove it without opening books that will cost the company everything—including two years of his own work. So Naomi's boss has one instruction: keep him out of the press. Naomi's solution is to keep him in the building, in her office, in a chair that was definitely built for someone smaller, six days a week, for six weeks. He hates it. She doesn't love it. It works anyway. When the audit turns up the name neither of them expected—the founder, still on the board—Declan chooses disclosure over survival, and Naomi chooses him over the job. The stock drops. The founder resigns. The board fires them both on the same afternoon. They open a two-person consultancy above a bakery six weeks later and hire the audit lead who handed them the file. The coffee machine in the new office is worse.