Chapter 28
O ver the next three days, Andrew and I sat down and hammered out a couple of options that he said he needed time to figure out.
Maybe I needed a little more seasoning as an investor, especially given that this was just our second deal—not yet even completed—and my first couple of ones, well, I had a little bit of trouble keeping my dick in my pants.
But I couldn’t spend time contemplating that.
I had to move, I had to move fast, and I had to move with purpose—contemplation and reflection would come at the appropriate time.
Andrew liked that idea best, although he was uneasy about me eventually purchasing more shares. That, however, was the point, and I had to admit, I began to feel a little like Edwin Hunt here.
In the back of my mind, I knew that in two, three years, the company likely would not have the kind of growth Andrew would have hoped for with him at the helm.
Once we hit that point where we realized we had not achieved that profitability, I would be able to make a move, put myself or someone else in the company, and then watch it explode.
It was a little Machiavellian, sure, but it was also from an honest place in that I wasn’t making the move to fuck over Andrew but actually to help him.
The second option was $1 million at a hair over six percent.
This option would keep us as passive investors, and while Andrew was paranoid about me coming in and having a larger say than he was comfortable with, he was equally uncomfortable with the idea of us investing and being nothing more than a dollar amount.
Plus, $1 million for his company would only go about ten months before it burned out—it wasn’t long enough for them to generate self-sustainability.
I had given him the second option to make him feel like he had choices, but I think we both knew that only one option was really viable—the $5 million for 30 percent one.
Well, in the context of us, that was true. In the context of all funding options, that wasn’t true. I had to hold my nose and hope Morgan worked his friendship enough and that I had made a good enough impression on Andrew to give us a fighting chance.
When I boarded the plane that Thursday morning, I felt pretty good about where we stood.
We had not agreed to anything, but Andrew’s words and actions suggested that he had great interest in joining us.
We joked, we laughed, and we bonded over things like growing up in rich families, travels, and the pressures of having to succeed from overbearing parents.
It was surprisingly vulnerable and honest, but I never let myself lose focus on the task at hand—sealing the deal.
Sealing the deal in a polite, win-win manner, not in an Edwin Hunt-style manner.
Just before I boarded the plane, my phone rang. With a sigh, not really looking forward to more questions about hanging out this weekend, I grabbed it. But it was not Layla or Claire.
It was Morgan.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I said.
“Where are you?”
He sounded flustered and worried, as if someone had just told him I was being held hostage.
“I’m at the airport, our plane’s boarding in about ten minutes.”
“Go somewhere private and quiet, please,” he said urgently, his voice a sharp whisper.
Now I began to worry something besides business had transpired, although I had my doubts—a family emergency would not have required me to go somewhere private and quiet, at least not for the sake of secrecy.
But that only made my worries even more pronounced—a family emergency would be sad, but as fucked up as it may have sounded, it was preferable to business concerns.
Family would bring us together and push the politics of business to the side; a business emergency would have made things much, much worse than they already were.
“Yeah?” I said. “I’m in the corner. No one can hear me.”
“Good. Chance, Edwin’s also going after Virtual Realty.”
No.
“Does he know?” I said.
There was just no way he didn’t know. This was too much of a coincidence—just minutes before flying home to New York City, right when I had left Andrew, Edwin Hunt was swooping in?
That was too coincidental. He had to have known in some fashion. He was, once again, trying to take advantage of me in some fashion.
Naturally, this pissed me off even more.
“I don’t think he does, it’s not like Virtual Realty is a secret among potential investors.”
Well, that was true, and that did make my fears seem a little on the deluded and paranoid side… except that had I had the exact same thought with the Taylors, I would have considered the whole ordeal ludicrous and, well, here we were.
“Even if he does, though, it doesn’t change anything,” Morgan continued.
“You have to continue to be the boots-on-the-ground person. Father is getting suspicious of how tired I am, albeit not about this particular deal. Right now, he thinks I’m just drinking too much.
But if he finds out you and I are doing something on the side… ”
“It would make him easy to cast you out of the business heirdom.”
“Which maybe wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but you know what I mean,” Morgan said.
“Apparently, he hasn’t said this, but the rumor going around is that he would just use the buyout to purchase the IP of Virtual Realty, shut it down, and then give it to his largest realty company for their own use.
He believes a company like that with that kind of technology will experience a boon. ”
Well, duh. That wasn’t the problem—that was the goal.
The problem was that I could easily see Edwin Hunt persuading Andrew that he had his best interests at heart and would take good care of the company, only for a little over a half-dozen people to realize less than six months later they were out of a job.
Even if it made the most financial sense, it would not make for a good ethical decision.
Not that Edwin Hunt ever believed in ethical decision making. The only thing that mattered to him was the bottom line.
“So he’s going to fuck over a startup to make his largest investment happy, which in turn will make him rich.”
“Exactly.”
“Doesn’t your dad ever tire of money at the expense of his soul?”
A long pause came on the phone. Even as his brother, I had never fully understood the dynamic between Morgan and Edwin Hunt.
It was always difficult to pin down. I had always assumed that Morgan felt overshadowed by his father, but whenever I said something critical, at best, Morgan would clam up as he did now, and at worst, he would call me an idiot who didn’t know any better.
The angriest and most scalding I had ever seen Morgan came when I said no one should aspire to be like his father.
“I wish he did.”
That was about the closest I would ever come to hearing Morgan criticize his father.
It made me wonder if maturity and age, or maybe just fatigue, was getting to him.
I never saw them talk about anything much beyond business.
That didn’t mean, of course, Edwin was a father who did nothing but make money.
He came to Edwin’s games as a kid when he could, but that wasn’t that common of a thing.
It seemed, if I was being generous to Edwin Hunt, he just stuck to what he knew and that was business.
That didn’t excuse his unethical business behavior, though.
“In any case, Chance, we have to move fast on this deal,” Morgan said, his voice still sharp and quiet. “I know these kinds of deals can take a couple of months to execute, sometimes longer depending on their size, but we need to hammer out something as soon as we can.”
“You’re telling me,” I said. “Do you want me to stay here in San Francisco?”
“I wouldn’t, too weird,” Morgan said. “Dad is on the next flight out there right now.”
The next flight.
I guess things are going to move really quickly one way or the other.
“You should just come home, but stay in touch with Andrew. Use the Wi-fi on the airplane to text him, I’ll reimburse you for it. Actually, don’t. I still don’t trust that you aren’t being tailed.”
How ridiculous was it that even now, Morgan wasn’t being crazy so much as he was being justifiably overly cautious?
“But when you land, send him some messages. Maybe you’ll text him in the middle of talking shop with Edwin—”
And then it hit me.
“Do you think Andrew is going to say anything to your father about us talking to him?”
Nothing could have spelled doom for us faster than that.
I would lose my monthly stipend from the family.
God knows what would happen to Morgan’s reputation and standing in the Hunt family.
I should have known that it wouldn’t be us that fucked ourselves over, but a potential client who just didn’t think much of saying we’d approached.
And Andrew did not exactly strike me as the type of person who could keep a secret, what with the way he wanted our talks to be open to everyone on staff.
I think my words hit Morgan just as hard, because he clammed up just as much as I did and didn’t say a word for several seconds.
“Stay in touch with him,” he finally said. “Make it abundantly clear he shouldn’t be telling anyone about anything. Frankly, we shouldn’t know that he’s talking to my father. I only know because Edwin announced it in a board meeting I got invited to, not an every day occurrence.”
“Understood.”
At that moment, the flight crew announced that boarding would begin.
“I have to go, Morgan,” I said. “Unless you want me to stay here. You know I have no qualms doing that.”
“I know, and then you and Edwin run into each other and Edwin wonders why you’re out there without a job.”
“I could say—”
“No, Chance, come home,” Morgan said. “Stay in touch with Andrew. I have to go.”
He didn’t even say bye before he hung up, leaving me to wonder who had walked into his office or who had summoned him. I let the phone drop, the call ending before my eyes.
It was not a small temptation to stay in San Francisco.
Morgan, for how much he had grown, still underestimated what I was capable of in terms of bullshitting my way into something I wanted.
Not even Edwin Hunt could outwit me; almost no one I knew could.
Only lust got in my way, which meant no man would ever fool me.
Yes, it was Craig Taylor who had fucked me over, but that was a function of telling Layla too much before sex, not me spilling the beans at dinner.
But Morgan had a point, even if he hadn’t made it directly.
Andrew would not take kindly to overbearing prospectors—he wanted the soft sale, the gentle introduction, the slow kind of work.
I couldn’t give that to him if I surprised him; put Edwin and me in the same room, and we’d both lose the sale.
Maybe that would provide some gratification in fucking over Edwin, but it would be as short-term as a single breath, because in the very next one, he would find a way to make my life hell until the day he died. And then, maybe even beyond that.
Begrudgingly, I got on the plane. But as I did, I made sure to send a couple of texts Andrew’s way so he wouldn’t forget us.
“Enjoyed meeting you. Keep us in mind and don’t decide anything until you speak to anyone. If someone tries to pressure you on the spot, they’re not going to help you in the end.”
I felt like that was warning enough for what Edwin Hunt would try to do. I had to hold my nose and pray that Andrew did not fall prey to his games.
I had hope, but not much. I had a feeling my prayers wouldn’t be answered.