27. Dylan

27

DYLAN

I hated having to leave Jessica at home. I should have been able to stay and care for her. Instead, I had to deal with cranky investors who needed me to hold their hand through a rather uncomfortable process.

From my perspective, the fact that they had dragged their heels and had too many questions over the presented numbers turned out to be a benefit. No signatures on anything meant Ryan had nothing to use against me.

I wasn't as concerned that he wanted to sue me as I was how he manipulated Jessica and had held that threat over her for years. It was going to cost me a lot more than a two-thousand bottle of Chateau Lafite to get rid of him. At this point, I considered any cost to be rid of this guy to be worth it.

"You look rough," Sarah said as soon as I walked into the office.

"It was a long night," I admitted.

"Ethan told me how well his little idea worked. That kid is some kind of hidden genius, I swear. Now if he'd only apply himself in school." She sounded exasperated.

"He's still young. He'll get it figured out. I mean, he figured out how to track down one person in a sea of hotels by narrowing in on his greed. He knows how people think. He should go into law or marketing," I suggested.

"He has to get out of high school first," she said.

"Is that a concern?"

Sarah shook her head. "Not at all. But his grades are average. He's a C-B student at best. No drive to do anything other than video games and his skateboard."

"He'll outgrow it, I'm sure of it. Last night's trick was entirely too clever. And it actually helped me to make some hard decisions. Oh, before I forget." I set down my messenger bag and pulled out the small box I had gotten for Sarah the day before. It seemed like so much longer. I held the box out to her. "I still owe you a proper bonus, but this is a little thank you for handling the investors."

She took the box and opened it. She glanced down at the bracelet and then back up at me. "Oh, Dylan, this isn't a small thank you. This is… thank you, it's lovely. Flowers are a small thank you."

"No, thank you . You really keep this office together, especially with all the time I've had to take off since Max came into my life."

She pressed her fingers against my arm in a soft tap. "Stop it. You're going to make me emotional. You have phone calls to make. I've prioritized who you should call first."

"Yeah, well first, I think I need to give the legal team a call. I want confirmation before I go into these calls," I said.

"That bad?" she asked.

"You tell me if I'm making the right decision here," I started. "Hypothetically, you find out that a potential business partnership you are looking to engage in, one that would make you millions and take five or seven years to see through to completion."

"So, something very profitable that would require working with said person or persons over the course of time," she confirmed.

I nodded. "Exactly. Now, hypothetically, the deal is really good, but for whatever reasons, it hasn't been finalized. Nobody has signed anything."

"No verbal agreements, no hand shakes?" she asked.

"Right, there might have been a hypothetical comment about wanting to make this deal go through and that signatures are just a detail at this point. So, hypothetically?—"

"You don't have to keep saying hypothetical, Dylan," she said with a light chuckle.

"Plausible deniability. There is no way someone can get you into a deposition and you can claim you knew exactly what we are talking about here, since I am only presenting potential situations, legally."

"Okay, but I understand going forward that this is all ‘what-if' and speculation. So your backside is legally covered." She was a smart woman. "Okay, so nothing official has been agreed upon. What's the problem?"

"What do you do when you find out the man who brought the deal to you was your…" I trailed off. What did I call Jessica? I was in love with her, but she hadn't been my girlfriend for very long. It was a strange thing to say out loud to other people. "Your girlfriend's ex."

Sarah tilted her head to the side. "Girlfriend?"

"Hypothetically," I said, reminding her.

She nodded. I knew she knew. She could get the details about Jessica out of me later.

"You aren't asking the hypothetical girlfriend and the hypothetical business partner to work together, so I don't see why it should be an issue. It might get weird if there were social events involved, and it might get weird if either party involved talked about their home relationships at work and vice versa. The girlfriend might not want to know about her ex. And same for the business partner, he might not be interested in her anymore. So, are you asking me what I would do? I guess I would have a talk with my girlfriend and see how she felt about it. If it's a really lucrative deal, I would explain that home and work are very different places and there really is no reason they can't remain separate." She thought for a minute. "Unless you're concerned that there might be a rekindling between the two of them during the course of the project. That would get awkward knowing you were stuck working with the guy who stole your girlfriend."

"That's assuming everything is amicable. What if you find out there was a contentious, heated past between them?"

"Either there is something very serious going on here, or you're reading some interesting books. Does this hypothetical situation have anything to do with what Ethan helped you out with last night?"

I sucked on my teeth and nodded.

"That wasn't very hypothetical, Dylan. You bribed someone with a bottle of very expensive wine."

"I didn't bribe anybody. I used the wine as bait to lure someone out of a hole. That's very different."

She crossed her arms and gave me one of those looks I had only ever seen mothers give. Sarah was disappointed in me. "How contentious, Dylan?"

"Abusive," I answered.

"Oh, that's easy," she said. "No." She started counting down points on her fingers. "Nothing has been signed. You support the people you love by not supporting their abusers. If you go through with the deal, don't be surprised when she is no longer your girlfriend. I can't believe you are even asking this."

"It's hypothetical, and I just needed confirmation that I'm thinking clearly. I need the legal team to back me up. Can you please get them on the phone?" I asked as I picked up my bag and started into my office.

"Of course I can. And Dylan?"

I stopped and turned back to Sarah.

"I hope your girlfriend is okay, that nothing horrible happened last night."

I nodded. "She'll recover. It was worse on me."

"Trauma is trauma. And for your own wellbeing, no amount of money is worth working with someone who caused you that kind of pain."

I was glad I spoke with Sarah before the call with Legal.

"Sounds like you're making business decisions with your dick. You might want to sit on this with those numbers in front of you for twenty-four hours before you make any decisions," the lawyer said.

I didn't need to look at the numbers. They were etched in my brain. Five hours. She had been missing for five hours. Three hours to clean and bandage, and twenty stitches in her left heel. Those were very precious numbers when compared to the projected profits of the Carmichael Proposal.

"I'll take that under advisement. Quick question."

"Yeah, what?"

"Do you have a girlfriend or a wife?" If he could tell me I was thinking with my dick, it was only fair to ask.

"Divorced. And I don't have one girlfriend, I have many, if you know what I mean?"

"I hear you loud and clear," I said. And what I was hearing was that he didn't have a woman in his life whom he cared about more than money. I certainly hoped the blanket he wove out of dollar bills kept him warm at night. I much preferred having Jessica to lose myself in and wrap around.

Knowing that Legal had my back, whether they agreed with me or not, was irrelevant. I just needed to know my bases were covered before I made the first call to the investors.

I was ready to face a barrage of disappointment.

"Sarah, can you put the call to Frisco Investments through?" I asked, braced for that challenge ahead.

I didn't have to wait long before she buzzed by phone. "Mr. Thompson is on the line for you."

"Edward!" I said with false bravado, diving right in, not giving him a chance to put me on the defense. "I really want to thank you for your extra diligence in reviewing those numbers on the Carmichael proposal. That extra time actually allowed us to unveil a very problematic situation, one that would have only gotten much worse if we had signed the deal."

"What are you talking about? It seems to me we have a bigger problem on our hands now. Or should I say on your hands. This morning, I received a very concerning call from Mr. Carmichael himself, bringing up the very real issue of bringing litigation against us and other investing partners for intentionally dragging out the process so that we lose out on certain properties. Property values these days are practically doubling overnight. And he's right. I don't want to be named in a frivolous suit," he grumbled.

"And it is a frivolous suit. I've already confirmed that he has no legal leg to stand on. He's trying to pressure us to make a very bad decision."

"But it is a very lucrative proposal. I don't know if Frisco would be able to support your future projects if you were to pull out of this," he said.

"What if I replaced it with a proposal of equal or greater opportunity? I think it would behoove us to seek out a different relationship," I explained.

"Are you saying that you are unwilling to work with Carmichael?" he asked.

"Information has come to light regarding Carmichael. I can't divulge on the basis of slander, and he's already threatening to sue over breach of promises made. I'm not going to give him something else to grab onto. The only promises were that I would pass this around and see what everyone thought," I explained.

"Do you have something better? Because a deal in the hand is worth a bird and all of that." The idiom was brutally bastardized, but I knew what he meant.