“Do it.”
Simone looked around the showroom.
“Also, nobody is to be terminated, disciplined, coached, or contacted about today’s incident without written approval from me or outside counsel.”
Martin nodded.
“Understood.”
Cassandra said, “This is ridiculous.”
Simone looked at her.
“No.”
“This is Tuesday.”
“What happens next depends on Wednesday.”
Simone had not purchased Sterling Crown because she wanted another dealership.
She already owned twelve.
Carter Mobility Holdings began as something much smaller.
Twenty-two years earlier, Simone graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in industrial engineering and enough debt to make sleep difficult.
She spent her first years working for automotive suppliers.
She learned manufacturing.
Dealer operations.
Inventory systems.
Service logistics.
Then she learned where the waste lived.
Not just physical waste.
Human waste.
Customers sitting four hours because departments did not communicate.
Technicians waiting for approvals.
Salespeople hiding information from finance.
Finance managers selling products customers barely understood.
Dealers treating complaints as threats instead of data.
Her first company built software to track service workflow.
It nearly failed.
Then a regional dealership group adopted it.
Wait times fell.
Parts errors dropped.
Customer retention improved.
Simone expanded.
Software became consulting.
Consulting became investment.
Investment became ownership.
By forty-two, she controlled Carter Mobility Holdings, which owned dealerships, service centers, fleet operations, and a fast-growing automotive technology platform.
She was rich.
Very rich.
But wealth was the least interesting thing about her.
Her father had never become wealthy.
Harold Carter died at sixty-three from pancreatic cancer.
Simone bought her first dealership three months before he died.
She drove him there on a Sunday morning when it was closed.
He walked through the spotless showroom slowly.
Then into service.
Then detail.
He touched the edge of a wash bay wall.
Simone remembered his hands.
Cracked knuckles.
Chemical stains that never fully left.
He looked at her.
“You own this?”