By early summer, the Titan review reached its final stage.
I knew because Lena mentioned that our procurement floor had reserved the large conference room for three consecutive days.
Then she looked at me.
“You heard nothing from me.”
“I know nothing.”
“Good.”
My conflict screen was still in place.
I could not see the proposals.
I could not attend discussions.
I could not speak with the evaluation team about any bidder.
Richard had made that rule before my first day, and nobody bent it.
Part of me wanted to know.
The larger part was grateful I did not.
My own work had become busy enough.
The Ohio program was stabilizing.
We had identified the real source of the delays: not one incompetent vendor, but three separate approval processes that had never been aligned.
We changed the governance calendar.
We moved decision rights closer to the regional team.
Within two months, the schedule stopped slipping.
It was not glamorous.
Nobody opened champagne.
It worked.
That was enough.
One afternoon, I was leaving a meeting when I saw Richard speaking with the chief procurement officer near the elevators.
They stopped talking when I approached.
I pointed at them.
“Don’t make that face. Now it looks suspicious.”
Richard laughed.
“We were discussing lunch.”
“Terrible lie.”
The procurement chief smiled.
“You’re going to be unbearable until this process ends, aren’t you?”
“I have been extremely disciplined.”
“You have.”
Then he became serious.
“And we appreciate it.”
That evening, I went to dinner with Priya.
Our legal relationship had mostly ended after I signed a negotiated severance agreement.
The final deal gave me fourteen weeks of salary, a neutral employment reference, correction of an inaccurate internal performance notation, and language preserving my right to respond truthfully to legal or regulatory requests.
I released potential employment claims.
There was no admission of wrongdoing.
No giant settlement.
No dramatic courtroom victory.
It was clean.
Useful.
Finished.
Priya lifted her glass.
“To boring resolutions.”
I laughed.
“I used to think boring meant losing.”
“Boring is underrated.”
She was right.
Two days later, Jessica called me after work.
“I got an offer.”
“Where?”
“A midsize consulting firm in Oakland. Senior associate. Smaller accounts.”
“How do you feel?”
“Like it might be a step backward.”
“Is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What would you learn?”
She paused.
“A lot, probably.”
“What would you own?”
“Actual workstreams. Not just slides.”
I smiled.
“Then maybe titles are not the only direction a career can move.”
She was quiet.
“You sound annoyingly healthy now.”
“Sterling has ruined me.”
She laughed.
Then she said, “I’m going to take it.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
She left my former company two weeks later.
On her last day, she sent me a photo of the old conference room.
The whiteboard still had faint marker stains from Project Titan.
Her caption said:
No champagne this time. Just leaving normally.
I replied:
Probably safer.
At the end of June, the procurement process finally concluded.
I learned the result the same way most Sterling employees did.
An internal announcement.
The contract had been awarded to a consortium led by one of my old firm’s competitors.
The total authorized program value remained up to $800 million over multiple years, subject to work orders, milestones, and performance conditions.
That wording made me smile.
Up to.
Multiple years.
Subject to conditions.
The reality was so much less cinematic than the group chat celebration months earlier.
My old firm had not been selected.
But the announcement did not humiliate them.
It did not explain why.
It did not mention me.
That was important.
Later that day, Richard stopped by my office.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
I thought about it.
“I spent a year trying to win that contract. It’s strange to see it go somewhere else.”
“That’s fair.”
“Did my old company lose because of what happened?”
He shook his head.
“I’m not going to discuss scoring with you.”
I smiled.
“I knew you’d say that.”
“But I can tell you this generally. No serious procurement decision of this size turns on one bad afternoon.”
That answer gave me more peace than details would have.
The layoff had damaged trust.
The conflicting explanations had created concern.
But months of evaluation had followed.
My old firm had been given a chance to recover.
The final outcome belonged to the full process, not to me.
That night, I walked home from the train instead of calling a car.
The air was cool.
San Francisco had one of those evenings when the fog stayed just offshore and the city looked sharper than usual.
At a crosswalk, my phone buzzed.
A message from an old coworker.
Guess it’s official. Titan gone.
I typed back:
I saw.
Then I put the phone away.
The deal was over.
For the first time, I understood that my story did not have to end where the contract did.
Click here to continue reading: PART 8: Marcus Asked to Meet Months Later, and I Finally Heard What He Had Been Protecting
The Layoff Call Came Five Miles Before the Biggest Pitch of My Career
Part 7 of 16
