Avett Thompson

Avett Thompson, the CEO of The Shop, connects Hannah Hall’s small furniture business to the technology company whose financial fraud destabilizes her family’s future. He first enters the story not as a public figure under investigation but as a client, arriving at Hannah’s workshop with Owen Michaels. The contrast between that ordinary business visit and the later images of Avett in handcuffs gives his character a public arc from executive patron to emblem of a corporate collapse.

Identity and Introduction

Avett is introduced as the head of The Shop and one of Hannah’s clients. His wife, Belle Thompson, is among her most loyal customers. Their patronage places Hannah’s rustic furniture in the couple’s San Francisco townhouse and their newly built country house in St. Helena, where Belle tends to retreat alone. Through this connection, Avett is part of the affluent clientele that sustains Hannah’s workshop, while Owen’s employment makes him a familiar presence in the household’s professional life.

Hannah has met Avett only a handful of times before he and Owen visit her New York workshop during a trip for an investor meeting. Belle has asked Hannah to make a rolled-edge side table for their bedroom, and Avett is asked to inspect it, though he is unsure what to assess beyond how it might look beside the bed frame. The furniture commission is specific and domestic; the business trip behind it points toward the corporate world that will later overwhelm Hannah’s domestic security.

Work and Relationships

Avett is Owen’s CEO and boss, while Owen works at The Shop on the business side of the firm’s emerging technology operation. The difference in their positions becomes visible when Avett calls Owen during a quiet moment in Hannah’s workshop. Owen checks the caller ID, his expression darkens, and he declines the call. When Hannah asks who it was, Owen identifies Avett and says he will call him later. The interruption suggests that work has intruded into the workshop, a space where Owen is otherwise present with Hannah, although the scene does not establish what Avett wanted or why Owen rejects the call.

When Hannah asks about Owen’s visible strain, Owen describes Avett as irrational about the IPO and minimizes the problem. His anger and irritation are unusual enough for Hannah to notice, and she observes that he is in her workshop rather than his own office. She considers the strain of disagreeing with a boss such as Avett and wants to tell Owen that he could leave the job. The exchange portrays Avett’s authority through its effect on Owen: the pressure is present even when Avett himself is not in the room. It does not, however, establish the particulars of their disagreement or show Avett directly confronting Owen.

The Shop’s IPO and Fraud

The later account of The Shop’s fraud explains why the IPO troubles Owen. The company’s privacy software, promoted as a transformative product, was not yet functional and could not be sold. It was developed far enough for demonstrations to prospective large customers, including technology companies and law offices. When those prospects showed interest, The Shop recorded contingent future sales as though they were revenue. The firm also had other software, video, and applications that formed its established business, but those did not make the promised privacy product ready for market.

The company went public before the software was ready. According to the explanation Hannah receives, The Shop then pretended its software was functional and falsified financial statements to keep its stock price high while the product was being completed. Avett’s bet was that the prospective sales would become real once the software worked; the false financial picture was meant as a temporary bridge, not an indefinitely sustainable business. The scheme was exposed before the software reached that point. This distinction explains the logic attributed to him without excusing the deception: a hoped-for future market was represented to investors as financial performance in the present.

The consequences extend beyond the executives. Hannah learns that the projected losses to stockholders could reach half a billion dollars. She and Owen are among the shareholders at risk: Owen retained his stock options when The Shop went public and bought more stock, committing some of their savings and future to the company. Hannah’s fear over their potential losses is sharpened by the question of whether Owen knew anything was wrong. The evidence leaves that question unresolved; at this point, the possibility that he did not know gives her hope.

Investigation and Public Downfall

A radio report identifies the raid on The Shop as the culmination of a fourteen-month investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It confirms that Avett is in custody and says expected charges include embezzlement and fraud. Sources close to the investigation allege that he planned to flee the country and had established a residence in Dubai; the report presents this as information from those sources, not as a finding Hannah independently verifies. It also anticipates further indictments of senior staff.

The company’s reckoning continues in the news coverage Hannah watches at a hotel café. One channel shows Avett handcuffed and escorted away; another previews Belle’s television interview, in which she calls his arrest a travesty of justice. A separate broadcast repeatedly warns that more indictments are coming. For Hannah, the repetition turns a corporate investigation into a threat reaching beyond Avett: it echoes the warning that Owen, too, may soon face further trouble. Avett’s arrest is therefore both a consequence of The Shop’s crisis and part of the pressure that makes Owen’s disappearance seem increasingly urgent.

The investigation also advances beyond Avett. Hannah’s friend Jules tells her that Jordan Maverick, The Shop’s chief operating officer and Avett’s number two, has been indicted. Jules relays information from a source at the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the privacy software has just become functional. Hannah understands the timing to mean that Owen may have believed the danger was receding, only to be caught off guard when Jules called to say investigators were coming. The sequence does not establish Avett’s knowledge of that call or Owen’s exact role in the fraud. Instead, it shows how the company’s shifting fortunes and the arrival of working software coexist with indictments and continuing risk.

Narrative Significance

Avett’s characterization is built through two kinds of visibility. In Hannah’s earlier life, he appears in the practical details of a client relationship: a bedroom table, a bed frame, and a visit to a workshop while in New York for investors. Later, he is visible on television as a handcuffed executive, surrounded by reports of fraud, losses, and further indictments. The contrast makes the corporate scandal legible through its consequences for people whose lives touch it at different distances: Belle, Owen, Hannah, and the shareholders.

His position also clarifies the pressure surrounding Owen without resolving the central uncertainty about Owen’s knowledge. Avett is the boss whose calls Owen declines and whose approach to the IPO Owen describes as irrational; he is also the executive held in custody after an investigation into The Shop’s practices. Those facts place him at the center of the company’s collapse, but they do not prove that Owen participated in or understood the falsification. Avett’s story thus supplies the financial and professional context for Owen’s crisis while leaving the reader, like Hannah, to distinguish what has been exposed from what remains unknown.