I turned to Marcus. “Who marked these as resolved?”

Marcus stared at the display.

Before he could answer, a live notification flashed across the screen: the oldest case file had just been permanently deleted.

And whoever was deleting the evidence was still active in the system right now.

Dưới đây là toàn bộ nội dung Chương 2 đã được biên tập và làm sạch hoàn toàn (loại bỏ mọi quảng cáo, menu điều hướng, bài viết đề xuất và liên kết rác):

The Gate Agent Tore My First-Class Ticket—Then Her Manager Called Me “Madam CEO”

Chapter 2: Seventeen Complaints

Marcus stared at the deletion alert as if the tablet had burned his hand.

“Don’t touch anything,” I said.

Bella backed away from the counter. “I didn’t delete anything.”

Nobody had accused her yet. That mattered.

Marcus immediately locked the screen and dialed our internal compliance hotline.

I turned toward the waiting passengers. “Boarding needs to continue.”

Marcus looked surprised. “Ms. Carter—”

“These people have flights to catch.”

Bella whispered, “Am I supposed to keep boarding?”

“No.” I glanced toward another employee approaching from the adjacent gate. “Have someone else take over.”

Marcus nodded. Within two minutes, a replacement agent was scanning passengers.

Still, the atmosphere in the terminal had irrevocably shifted. People cast furtive glances in our direction as they boarded, several with their phones still raised.

An older gentleman paused beside me. “I saw the whole thing,” he said. “If you need a witness, I’ll gladly give you my information.”

“Thank you.”

A woman behind him offered the same, followed by another traveler.

Bella watched in mounting panic. “I made a mistake.”

I turned to her. “A mistake is typing the wrong seat number.”

She flinched. “I was under a lot of pressure.”

“From whom?”

Bella glanced toward Marcus. That was telling, and Marcus caught it as well.

“Bella,” Marcus asked carefully, “what does C27-118 mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“You reacted the second you saw it.”

“I panicked because she’s the CEO!”

“Then why did you plead ‘please’ before anyone even brought up deleted files?”

Bella’s jaw tightened. “I want a union representative.”

“That is your right,” I replied.

She seemed caught off guard by my immediate agreement.

“Until then,” I continued, “you are barred from accessing any company system.”

Marcus escorted us to a private operations room tucked behind the gate. Once inside, I placed calls in rapid succession: General Counsel, Internal Audit, and our Chief People Officer.

My instruction was singular: preserve everything. No premature conclusions, no baseless accusations, and absolutely no quiet cover-ups. I had watched corporations collapse because leadership decided the narrative before uncovering the facts, and I had no intention of repeating that mistake.

Yet the pattern emerging on Marcus’s screen was impossible to ignore. Seventeen complaints. All originating from the exact same gate. All sharing nearly identical circumstances. And now, someone was actively purging the digital paper trail.

Within twenty minutes, our director of cybersecurity joined via an encrypted video feed.

“The credentials indicate the deletion was initiated from a supervisor terminal in Concourse C,” she reported.

“Whose account?”

“Thomas Vale.”

Marcus went entirely still.

“Who is Thomas Vale?” I asked.

“My direct supervisor.”

“Where is he right now?”

Marcus checked his phone. “He’s logged on-site today.”

“Find him.”

Bella sat at the far end of the conference table. Her tears had dried, replaced by a dull numbness.

I looked at her closely. “Did Thomas instruct you to challenge premium passengers?”

“No.”

“Did he instruct you to tear boarding passes?”

“No.”

“Did he train you to single out travelers who didn’t look like they belonged in first class?”

Her gaze dropped to the floor. The silence spoke louder than words.

“Bella.”

She wrung her hands. “There were… guidelines.”

“What guidelines?”

“Nothing written down.”

Marcus looked appalled. “Bella, what are you talking about?”

She met his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“I most certainly do not.”

“Premium cabin protection.”

I had never encountered the phrase in any company handbook. “Explain that.”

Bella swallowed hard. “Thomas claimed ticket fraud was surging—stolen frequent flyer points, compromised corporate accounts, passengers traveling on forged profiles.”

“Fraud happens,” Marcus countered. “Which is why we have strict verification protocols.”

“He claimed standard protocols weren’t enough,” Bella said.

A cold knot tightened in my gut. “What did he tell you to do instead?”

“To use our own discretion.”

“Based on what?”

Bella hesitated, unable to look me in the eye. I already knew the answer, but it needed to be on the record.

“He told us that if someone felt out of place, we should challenge them.”

“Out of place how?”

Her voice dropped to a near-whisper. “Passengers who didn't look the part.”

The room fell dead silent.

I leaned in. “What does that mean, Bella?”

Her eyes welled up. “He never explicitly said race.”

Of course he hadn’t. Prejudices are rarely committed to paper.

“He framed it around clothing,” Bella continued in a rush. “Age, body language, whether someone seemed accustomed to luxury travel.”

“And you carried that out?”

“At first, I genuinely believed it was loss prevention.”

“At first?”

She nodded faintly. “Until the complaints started rolling in.”

“All seventeen?”

“I don’t know the exact number.”

Marcus interrupted. “Why weren't those complaints ever escalated to my desk?”

Bella looked back at him. “Because Thomas personally intervened and resolved every single one.”

That aligned with the system records.

I instructed cybersecurity to recover the purged file immediately, then directed audit to pull every passenger grievance associated with Thomas Vale over the past twenty-four months.

The full report came back forty-five minutes later.

It wasn't seventeen complaints.

It was forty-three.

Twenty-nine involved passengers of color. Eleven involved young solo travelers. Seven involved passengers utilizing mobility assistance. Several cases overlapped.

While statistics alone didn't constitute legal proof of malice, the data was damning.

Marcus looked pale. “How could I have missed this?”

I didn't answer, because the same indictment weighed heavily on me. I was the CEO. The dashboards presented to my executive suite had always shown green metrics and healthy resolution rates. Executives congratulated themselves on customer satisfaction scores while real human beings were being degraded at our gates.

Among the files was a thirteen-year-old girl flying unaccompanied. A decorated military physician. An elderly grandmother traveling on a first-class ticket her daughter had bought her as a milestone birthday gift.

The agent notes were chilling:

• “Passenger became argumentative upon routine inquiry.”

• “Passenger struggled to articulate premium status details.”

• “Passenger exhibited unfamiliarity with premium lounge etiquette.”

Anger surged through me, but anger was not evidence.

“Interview everyone involved,” I directed Marcus. “Individually. And preserve all terminal security footage within the retention window.”

Bella spoke up unexpectedly. “There’s something else.”

We both turned to her.

She kept her eyes fixed on the tabletop. “Thomas has a notebook.”

“What kind of notebook?”

“He calls it the irregulars book.”

Marcus exhaled sharply. “Good Lord.”

“Where does he keep it?” I asked.

“In his office.”

“Does it hold customer data?”

“I can't say for sure. I only caught a glimpse of it once.”

“What did you see?”

“Flight numbers, seat assignments, full names, and personal notations.”

I stood up immediately. “Marcus, lock down his office right now.”