Diana's smile had been sharp as a blade.
"I told you. My board of directors. The people who make decisions about stores like this one. The people who decide who stays and who goes."
And that's when Patricia Wittmann had finally realized that she had made the biggest mistake of her life.
The name Diana Mitchell hadn't just been familiar.
It had been the name on every company memo, every policy document, every paycheck she had received for the past eight months.
Diana Mitchell hadn't been just some customer who had wandered into the store.
Diana Mitchell had been the founder.
The CEO.
The woman who had built Luminous Designs from nothing.
And who had owned every single store in the company.
The woman Patricia had discriminated against, dismissed, and tried to have removed from the store hadn't been just any customer.
She had been the customer.
The one customer in the world who had the power to end Patricia's career with a single phone call.
And Patricia had just given her every reason to do exactly that.
"Oh my God," Ashley gasped, her voice rising with each word as the reality of the situation had hit her like a freight train.
Kevin had looked at Ashley's phone screen and had seen the company newsletter photo that every Luminous Designs employee received monthly.
There had been Diana Mitchell smiling from the front page under the headline:
"CEO Spotlight: Building Dreams One Store at a Time."
Kevin's face had gone from pale to absolutely white as he had realized they were all witnessing the destruction of Patricia's career in real time.
"Patricia, stop. Just stop talking," Kevin had said urgently, trying to save his boss from digging herself deeper into a hole she'd never climb out of.
But Patricia had still been completely oblivious to the disaster unfolding around her.
She had looked around at her employees' shocked faces, at the customers recording everything, at the chaos she had created, and had demanded, "What are you all looking at?"
That's when Diana had ended her phone call.
She had slipped her phone back into her purse with the calm precision of someone who had just set the wheels of justice in motion.
When she had looked up at Patricia, her expression had been serene, almost peaceful.
The kind of calm that came right before a storm.
"Patricia," Diana had said, her voice carrying the authority of someone used to being heard. "What do you know about Luminous Designs' founding principles?"
Patricia had been annoyed by the question.
Here she had been trying to handle what she had seen as a disruptive customer, and now this woman had been quizzing her about company policy.
Diana had reached into her purse with deliberate slowness, like a gunslinger drawing a weapon in an old Western movie.
She had pulled out a business card and held it between two fingers, letting Patricia get a good look at it.
"Diana Mitchell," she had read aloud. "Founder and Chief Executive Officer."