Chapter 97 - Another One #2
Then she asked—
"How much?"
"No."
Immediate.
Jane groaned.
"Lia."
"No."
"Was it cheaper than the first?"
Silence.
I should have lied.
I didn't.
Jane caught the pause.
"Oh no."
I closed my eyes.
"Jane."
"Was it MORE EXPENSIVE?"
I said nothing.
Long silence.
Then—
"You're a monster."
"Again, excessive."
"Scary."
"You've used that."
"I'm upgrading the classification."
I laughed.
Apparently she called Chloe afterward.
Because dinner that weekend became an ambush.
I arrived.
Both of them already sitting.
Chloe had a calculator open.
I stopped.
"No."
Jane smiled sweetly.
"Sit."
"No."
"Sit."
I considered leaving.
Then sat.
Bad decision.
Chloe immediately said—
"Second acquisition."
"No."
"Four million?"
I stared.
Jane's face changed.
"Oh my God."
"Chloe."
"Four?"
Nothing.
"Four point two?"
Nothing.
Jane looked at me.
I looked away.
"Four point five?"
I reached for water.
Chloe smiled.
"Close."
"You do not know that."
"Four point six?"
I stopped.
Fuck.
Jane stared.
Chloe stared.
I stared at both of them.
Nobody spoke.
Then Jane whispered—
"Four point six million?"
"I have confirmed nothing."
She looked genuinely offended.
"You spent four point six million pesos on another company?"
"Allegedly."
"ALLEGEDLY?"
Chloe leaned back.
"This is incredible."
"No. It's private."
Jane looked different at me.
Not joking for a second.
Actually recalibrating.
I knew that look.
She was comparing me to the girl she knew in high school.
The one who liked her.
The one who printed small custom orders.
The one who borrowed PowerPoints.
Now—
acquisitions.
Millions.
Staff.
Machines.
Companies.
I watched the shift happen.
Then she said—
"Monster."
There.
Back.
Good.
Chloe looked at her calculator.
"No."
I pointed at her.
"Do not."
"Combined—"
"No."
"Seven point three—"
"Chloe."
Jane covered both ears.
"I don't want accumulated annual salary."
"You asked last time."
"I changed as a person."
Chloe kept going.
"If Jane earns around thirty thousand—"
Jane raised her voice.
"NO JANE-YEARS."
I laughed so hard I had to put my drink down.
There.
Worth it.
Completely worth it.
Eventually the interrogation stopped.
Mostly because food arrived.
Jane still looked at me occasionally.
Different.
Not afraid.
Not exactly.
Just—
impressed in a way that made her slightly uncomfortable.
Maybe because she had known me before any of this.
High school flattened hierarchy.
No matter how many companies I bought, Jane still remembered me being terrible at subtle flirting.
Useful.
Humbling.
The second acquisition turnaround was almost disappointingly easy.
First:
Cut custom fabrication jobs that had terrible margins and no strategic value.
Not all custom.
Just the ones where every order became a new engineering project.
Second:
Separate packaging from signage operationally.
Shared admin.
Shared sales visibility.
Different production queues.
Different material controls.
Third:
Push the products the machines were actually good at.
UV acrylic.
Store signs.
Decals.
Window graphics.
Labels.
Packaging sleeves.
Printed rigid boards.
Product displays only where repeatable.
Fourth:
Reprice installation.
Properly.
Travel.
Labor.
Hardware.
Site time.
Risk.
No more pretending installation was a courtesy.
Fifth:
Clean inventory.
We sold or used old weird substrates instead of continuing to treat them like valuable artifacts.
Sixth:
Sales.
Actual sales.
The UV machine had been sitting underutilized while clients elsewhere were asking me for products it could make.
I moved existing demand into it.
Immediate volume.
Beautiful.
No massive staff overhaul.
Good.
I did not want to acquire businesses just to fire everyone.
Most people were competent.
They had simply been operating under a blurry strategy.
We clarified roles.
The signage team handled signage.
Packaging handled packaging.
Fabrication became selective.
One senior employee, Dario, became operations supervisor after proving he already knew half the answers.
A sales coordinator, Mina, understood the customer base better than anyone.
I gave her clearer pricing authority within guardrails.
She stopped asking approval for every normal quote.
Amazing what happened when you let people do their jobs.
Month Two.
Margins improved.
Month Three.
UV utilization jumped.
Packaging repeat orders increased.
Month Four.
Profitable enough that I stopped checking the numbers every three days.
That was progress.
Then I checked every five.
Still emotionally compromised.
The biggest surprise was signage.
Not the giant custom builds.
The boring stuff.
Office signs.
Storefront graphics.
Acrylic logos.
Wall branding.
Directional signs.
Menu boards.
Window decals.
Repeatable.
Standardizable.
Easy to estimate.
Good margins if installation was priced correctly.
Boring was beautiful.
I loved boring.
One afternoon, I stood in the signage facility watching a batch of acrylic signs being finished.
Dario came over.
"Ma'am, next week full na halos UV."
"How full?"
He showed me.
I smiled.
He noticed.
"Bibili kayo machine?"
"No."
He looked disappointed.
"Not yet."
"Pero full."
"One week is not demand."
He nodded.
"Three months?"
I looked at him.
"Now you're learning."
He smiled.
Dangerous.
The packaging side grew because of my original clients.
Jewelry.
Cosmetics.
Food sellers.
Small brands.
Boxes.
Sleeves.
Labels.
Inserts.
Tags.
Then the acquired packaging clients discovered we could also handle commercial print, DTF, and laser.
Cross-sell again.
Every acquisition made the network stronger.
That was the part I loved most.
Not owning more companies.
At least that's what I told myself.
I liked seeing separate capabilities connect.
Client A needed three suppliers before.
Now—
one group.
Better scheduling.
Better consistency.
Better margins.
Less coordination.
Beautiful.
Jane visited the signage facility once.
Not intentionally.
We were meeting nearby and I was running late.
I told her to meet me there.
Mistake.
She entered.
Looked around.
UV printer.
Large-format equipment.
Acrylic.
Vinyl.
Workers.
Vehicle outside.
Then looked at me.
"This is the second one?"
"Yes."
She stared again.
Monster face.
I sighed.
"Stop."
"I didn't say anything."
"You're thinking it."
"Four point six."
"I confirmed nothing."
She touched one acrylic sign.
"Four point six."
"Do not touch unfinished customer work."
She immediately removed her hand.
Then—
"Scary."
I laughed.
"You are very repetitive."
"You bought two companies before twenty-six."
"That is also repetitive."
"Are you going to buy a third?"
"No."
Immediate.
Very sincere.
I already had enough.
Original company.
Commercial print acquisition.
Packaging/signage acquisition.
Integration.
Management.
Machines.
People.
No.
Absolutely not.
Jane narrowed her eyes.
"You said that too fast."
"Because the answer is no."
"Good."
"Yes."
"Stop."
"What?"
"Whatever your brain is doing."
"My brain is doing nothing."
She stared.
I stared back.
Then somewhere behind us, one of the machines started running.
Jane looked toward it.
Then back at me.
"Monster."
"Fuck you."
That night, an email arrived.
Subject:
Business Opportunity – Potential Sale
I stared at it.
No.
Deleted.
Very good.
Progress.
Then restored it from Trash.
Only to see what kind of company.
Professional curiosity.
Nothing more.
I opened the email.
Read the first paragraph.
Food packaging supplier.
Small manufacturing operation.
Owner considering exit.
Recurring accounts.
Operational issues.
I closed it.
No.
Absolutely not.
Two acquisitions were enough.
I had proved I could do it.
There was nothing left to prove.
Then my brain whispered—
But what's wrong with it?
I put the phone face-down.
Dangerous.
Very dangerous.
Because the second acquisition had been easier.
And apparently the worst possible thing anyone could give me was evidence that I was good at this.