27. Renegotiate

Renegotiate

Grant

2 Days Until New Year’s Eve

I sat in my office staring at my computer screen without seeing the documents I was supposed to review. I glanced at my watch again to check the time. The gingerbread contest started at three, and I wanted to make sure we arrived early. We still had a couple of hours until we had to leave.

Nova.

I meant what I had said to her Christmas morning at breakfast. I hadn’t seen her coming. I wasn’t prepared for the extent of my feelings for her. I craved her every minute that I was away from her. The contract was up in two days, meaning we had that many days to make a plan to keep her.

I pressed a button on my phone. “Joel?”

“Yes, sir?” Joel’s voice replied through the speaker.

“Can you ask Lincoln and Benjamin to come to my office? We’ll be in a private meeting for the rest of the afternoon until we have to leave. Hold all of our calls unless it’s Nova.”

“Yes, sir.”

It only took my brothers a few minutes to get to my office. “Lock the door and take a seat,” I instructed.

“What’s wrong?” Lincoln asked. “Is Nova ok?”

“Nova is fine,” I assured him, “but this is about her. We need to figure out how to keep our company going by working fewer hours. We all agree that we want to be with Nova, so we need to figure out how to do that. We can’t always be working. She deserves to be a priority.”

“Agreed,” Ben replied. “Letting her go isn’t an option for me anymore. And if I can’t have her to myself, I couldn’t think of two better people to share her with.”

“It’s kind of fitting, really,” Lincoln said. “We’ve always done everything together. Maybe that’s why relationships have never worked for us before. It needed to be a group effort to work.”

“We can discuss why later,” I said, getting us back on track. “It’s the how we’re here to discuss.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Lincoln said. “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? We need to promote people. We have plenty of employees that we trust who could do the job. We’ve never been willing to hand over the responsibilities of the day-to-day operations before.”

“Then let’s talk management. Who are our top choices for each department?” I asked, leaning forward to get to work. We developed a new management structure, allowing the most effortless power transfer. We would remain the heads of the company and still plan to work closely on each new project, but on a more big-picture scale. We had just started to discuss specific employees for the new positions we were creating when there was a knock on my door.

“Guys?” Joel called through the door. Ben looked puzzled as he went to let our assistant in. He never interrupted our private meetings unless it was an emergency. “Sorry!” Joel said as he rushed in. We have a problem—a big problem. Midland Sports Media is waiting for you in the conference room.”

“What do they want?” I asked with a growing feeling of dread.

“They want to renegotiate their contract, or they’re backing out completely,” Joel informed us.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Lincoln exclaimed. “We’re days away from product launch, and now they want to renegotiate their signed contract?”

“Yep. And they informed me that they’d pay the breach of contract fee if you refuse,” Joel continued.

“We’re busy this afternoon. Tell them we will meet with them in the morning,” I ordered.

“I did. They said they won’t be back if you don’t meet with them today.”

“Those fucking bastards,” I growled. Joel looked like he was ready to throw up, so I tried to rein in my anger. It wasn’t his fault.

“Thanks, Joel,” Ben said. “Let them know that we will be there shortly.” Joel nodded and hurried from the office. “They’re our biggest sponsor. We can’t brush them off.”

“I know that,” I snapped. Never mind that they were our biggest sponsor. We already had millions sunk into the completed ad campaigns set to launch soon. The fuckers had us between a rock and a hard place, and they knew it.

Ben sighed. “I’ll text Nova and tell her something came up, and she’ll have to meet us at the school.”

“We can’t miss this,” Lincoln reminded us. “She’s been planning this for weeks.”

“We won’t,” I growled as I stood, whipped my suit jacket off my chair, and put it on. “Let’s get this over with.”