Chapter 63
I stood up from my table and walked over to the girl one back from the front of the line.
“Looking for company?” I said.
Claire smiled up at me, her expression weary and exhausted—almost as if what I had expected from my mother and from her were swapped, my mom looking like the youthful one and Claire looking like the one who had added a few years to her life.
“I don’t know that I would say that,” she said.
“Well, do you have somewhere to be?”
“Work, but, you know, everything is going to shit, so what’s another half hour of not being able to catch up on things?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing full well that Edwin had played a major shadowy role in the demise of her company, Rising Sun. “I’m right over there.”
“OK,” she said, giving a smile that I could tell was forced.
I wasn’t sure if this was any longer a good idea, especially given the haggard state that Claire found herself in, but given what Edwin had done and what Morgan and I had failed to do as shareholders in her company, it felt like the least that I could do to help her.
Maybe some of this wouldn’t do anything other than prolong the inevitable, but I had to at least have that dialogue with her.
I couldn’t just say “oh well, fuck it,” and move on.
Claire deserved a second chance for how badly she had gotten screwed, coming into the battle between Edwin and me. She had taken investments from a friend in Morgan, become close with me, and now was on the verge of losing everything—how could I not give her that second chance?
Admittedly, it was tempting to see this as a means to put pressure on Edwin, to make him feel the burn somehow.
I could see the money being used to raise Rising Sun out of the ashes, to purchase enough of the company to force MCH out of the majority spot, and to dance around the fuming Edwin.
I could see myself using the money for a campaign to make Edwin feel the embarrassment of his impending divorce in public—I could see many underhanded tactics that would make Edwin feel some semblance of the disgust I’d felt when his dirty tactics came to the forefront.
But was that really what I wanted? If Mrs… if Mom had given me that money to make things better, was getting back connected and dragged through the mud with Edwin really what I wanted?
Maybe. But I needed far more time to sift through the difference between a dark desire and a genuine positive change, and until that time came, I’d spend the money on what most obviously made things better.
Claire sat down a few moments later, placing her head in her hands, sighing for a long period of time, and then looking up at me with her hands still on her face.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m not trying to draw a pity party here.
I’m just truly on the verge of burnout and have no idea where this is going to go.
Well, that’s not quite true. I know this is going to end with my business going under, but I’m holding on to the probably naive hope that I can miraculously find some money to hire people who won’t then jump ship at the mention of unsubstantiated rumors. ”
Put that way, it did sound like a damn miracle was needed.
It also sounded like I was at some serious fault for letting shit get to that point.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Claire,” I said. “What can I do—”
“Don’t,” she said. “Sorry, don’t mean to be so curt, but don’t. I am not even sure I want a miracle. I’m just so goddamn tired. I started this with a dream and hopes, and to come so close to realizing that, only to see it all fall apart for such confounding reasons…”
She didn’t finish her sentence, instead dropping her head to the table.
A waiter came by a couple of seconds later, putting her coffee in front of her, but her head still didn’t rise.
I was tempted to put my hand on her hair, shake her up, and encourage her, but that felt like a step too close to flirting.
Aside from us being broken up and having ended our little dance, I couldn’t let myself fall into bad habits.
I realized here how, weirdly enough, I was lucky to be where I was.
I could survive Edwin’s attacks, even if Mom had not just given me a cool million bucks.
But not everyone could. Sure, I could. Morgan kind of could.
Mom was about to, most especially when the courts gave her half of Edwin’s funds—hell, even a tenth of his funds would go a long way to making sure she was set for life and so would anyone else she cared about.
But Claire?
She was probably scarred for life from ever starting another company.
And that didn’t even account for other people who weren’t here. Past business partners, both within and outside the firm. John Burnson. Former friends.
Edwin wasn’t a businessman in the world. He was like a cancer.
“At this point,” Claire said, finally rising out of her bowed position.
“I basically plan on just letting the company slowly bleed out. I have enough money to keep it going and keep it up as a consulting service for a few of my clients, but as a mass market product? Not a chance in hell. I don’ have enough money to hire new people, and after what happened with the last round… ”
I had planned on just giving Claire about half of this money, but my thoughts were taking me to a disturbing reality that so long as Edwin Hunt was around and had power, he would use it to harm Claire and those that I cared about.
He wouldn’t physically hurt them, but with the emotional damages he could inflict, they might as well have been the same.
“How many months can you survive if you only maintained the current revenue that you have?” I asked.
“Four,” she said immediately, clearly having done the math all too well.
“OK,” I said, numbers and thoughts running through my head.
Four months should be plenty of time to get rid of Edwin.
The difference between my thoughts now and from the previous twenty-four hours was that instead of seeing this as a personal mission, as a quest for vengeance Count of Monte Crisco style, I now saw this as something of a social obligation, a duty to the betterment of the market and society a like to bring down someone so cruel, vicious, and just malignant for the world at whole.
Maybe it was pedantic and wouldn’t mean anything, but I sincerely believed after sitting with my mother and now Claire that to take down Edwin Hunt would go beyond me; in fact, I was probably one of the least affected people that Edwin had dealt with.
“Do me a favor,” I said, speaking slowly so that I could buy myself more time to let the thoughts run through my head. “No matter what you do, do not close the shop. No matter what.”
“Chance, I can’t just do that,” she said. “This is the Titanic, and unlike the captain of ships, I’m not going to go down with it if I can help it. I need a real job, better experience, I need all these things. There’s no point—”
“There is a point,” I said. “Just… let’s make a deal. Six months. After four months, if you’re at that point of dead in the water, I’ll give you funds for two more months. But in the interim, please, please, please, do not shut down.”
Claire looked at me with great suspicion, as if what I was saying had, well, the ulterior motives that it most certainly did.
“Why?”
“I have my reasons,” I said. “But one of them, sincerely, is seeing you succeed.”
I meant every word that would follow.
“Claire, it hurts a little that you chose to say we need to end what we had, but I understood it. We had to become more professional for both of our sakes. But what has not been lost is that I like you and think you’re an awesome person. What happened to you, with all of your employees leaving?”
I looked around the room and leaned forward.
“I have good reason to believe this was a smear job by someone to take all of your employees. I can’t say why, mostly because I don’t know why someone would resort to this, but it’s nothing to do with you or your company.
You know this, because you know the accusations levied against your company by former employees are all bullshit.
You probably even saw it when you interviewed them! ”
“A bit,” she admitted. “But what are you getting at?”
“What I’m getting at,” I said, followed by a pause to make sure I picked my next words exactly right.
“Is that what happened with your employees leaving is not the source of the problem. It’s a symptom of the problem.
And I’m going to do everything I can to make it right.
And once that’s taken care of? Your company can grow back to what it needs to be. ”
“That’s all good,” Claire said, continuing to rub her eyes. She really does need a break from all of this. Jesus. “But…”
I stood up, went over to her, gently grabbed her face with my hands, and kissed her forehead.
“I promise that, you give me six months, and Rising Sun will either be back to where it was, or you can move on and I will never mention any of this to you again.”
Promise me…
Those two words, I swore, would either become the defining theme of my life or a cruel tease, a cursed reminder that what people said often had very little impact on what they actually did.
“I need to think about this, Chance, I can’t just commit to you and say yes now,” she said.
“If I hadn’t seen you just now, there’s a decent chance I might have just said ‘fuck it’ and closed down shop before the month was out.
But I’ll promise you this, then. I won’t shut anything down without coming to you first.”
“Good enough,” I said, knowing well enough this was not the spot to push my luck any favor. “Thank you, Claire.”
I leaned down again and kissed her on the forehead once more.
“Call me if anything comes up, OK?”
“I will,” Claire said, finally giving a sheepish smile that I had so come to admire over the previous stretch when we were together.
I left, giving her a gentle shoulder squeeze, wondering if this was a problem that I’d be able to live up to.
After all, the promises to believe in Layla and Morgan were ones that I was having a lot of trouble believing in these days.
To love Layla, and to trust Morgan? At least loving Layla seemed somewhat conceivable, albeit not for some time.
But Morgan? My brother, the one I’d formed MCH with, only to have it sold to the enemy?
Promise was a very loaded word for me right now. The fact that I had said it to Claire said something, in that either I was acting rashly and foolishly, as usual, or I really was turning the corner and living up to my own word.
For now, though, with a million dollars on me, I had to get home and to a secure location so I could better figure out what the hell to do with all this money.