"Yes."
"Good."
For a moment, he was quiet.
Then he said, "Nia, your mother understood that institutions should not depend on one person being able to endure unlimited hardship."
She looked surprised.
"What do you mean?"
Wei continued.
"If the stewardship arrangement requires independent representatives to perform serious work, it should have an appropriate process for necessary expenses and properly authorized compensation."
Nia nodded.
He explained that she shouldn't be expected to finance complex corporate oversight from her restaurant wages.
There were procedures for approving reasonable costs associated with the arrangement's administration, subject to its governing terms and safeguards.
Her lawyer could explain the options.
Nia felt embarrassed.
"I don't want anybody thinking I'm doing this for money."
Wei's voice softened.
"Being paid appropriately for legitimate work is not the same as selling your judgment."
For a long moment, she said nothing.
Then he added.
"Your mother taught me that."
Nia began crying.
Wei waited quietly.
When she could speak again, she thanked him.
For the first time, she understood that honoring Lorraine didn't require refusing every form of support.
It required preserving the difference between serving a defined responsibility and accepting money to abandon it.
The operational review became equally serious.
Grace Chen arranged for the independent directors to receive a detailed assessment of the proposed integration's effect on temperature-monitoring services.
The report identified several practical risks.
Some Asterion projections assumed the monitoring software could be transferred to a separate licensing company without disrupting access for existing customers.
But several contracts had obligations that couldn't simply be ignored.
Other projections relied on reducing field technician coverage before new remote-response systems were fully tested.
The report warned that poorly managed consolidation could increase the time required to respond to equipment failures.
It didn't predict that every shipment would be damaged.
It didn't claim the technology would suddenly stop working.
But it established that the financial model assumed savings before adequately accounting for the operational work needed to achieve them safely.
One example involved a regional medical distributor serving independent pharmacies.
During a recent equipment failure, local staff detected an abnormal temperature pattern and intervened before the affected shipment was released for use.
The response required experienced personnel who understood both the monitoring system and the physical equipment.
Under one proposed integration model, some of those positions would have been eliminated or reassigned before replacements were fully trained.
Grace raised the example during the board review.
"The system worked because somebody understood the warning and acted."
One investor representative asked whether new automated tools could provide the same protection.