12. Candice

CHAPTER 12

CANDICE

B roken Cauldrons has the greatest sandwiches I have ever, ever eaten. The fact that I can go out for my lunch every day and drop ten dollars on a sandwich and drink without even feeling guilty about it is one of the most freeing things that has come from owning Mettie Marketplace.

It's an old nickname from school that I despised back then, but we've been building the brand to appeal to go-getting women, so a friendly kind of name felt important. And if other people can slap their names on their products and make billions, so can I.

I swing back into my office to finish my sandwich — a glorious layering of turkey and salad and a house sauce that sparkles on the tongue — but the second I sit down and wake my computer back up, I'm bombarded with a dozen emails and a reminder of a meeting I'm meant to be in in three minutes.

"Shit," I mumble, my mouth full. I manage to force down most of my sandwich but abandon my chips for a little after-meeting snack, then jump up and hurry down the corridor as quickly as my professional dignity will allow.

When I get to the meeting room, Kelly and the gang are already waiting for me. The look of discontent she gives me does not fill me with joy.

Our office isn't huge and it isn't fancy, but there's enough space for the team to work, me to have my own office, and for us to have a little staff kitchen. It's not much, but it's real, physical proof that we're heading in the right direction: up. It does make it more embarrassing to be late, though. It's not like I could have gotten lost.

"How's it going?" I ask as I take my seat at the head of the table, pulling up the agenda on my tablet. In big red letters, the word investments stares bleakly at me.

Kelly shakes her head slightly, making her glasses slide down her nose. She pushes them back up, only for half of her thick, dark bangs to fall out into her face. To look at her like this, you'd think she was chaotic and scattered, but she's put as much of her heart into Mettie's as I have. It might have been my idea, but without her as my right hand, we wouldn't be here now.

"The good news," Kelly says, opening a presentation on the screen that shows a couple of charts, "is that people are using our site! The advertising campaign we started last month has really been helpful, showing a great increase in activity both in buyers and sellers."

"Awesome," I say, leaning back in my chair. Maybe things aren't as dire as they look after all.

Kelly continues, flicking to another slide that shows how money is flowing in and out of the company. These graphs look a little less healthy, and I grimace as I read them. "The bad news," she says, "is that my mother has made me swear to take Chinese New Year off next year so we can go to the parade, and none of you are invited to the party unless these accounts start picking up."

There's a faint groan of disappointment. For as long as I've known her, Kelly's family have thrown these amazing New Year parties, and they've always been generous enough to invite me and the team. Her mother's New Year dumplings are so legendary that whenever Kelly's managed to bring leftovers in, they've been gone in seconds.

She raises her eyebrows smugly at us, knowing she doesn't need to say anything else to make her point.

"Okay," I cut in. "So, what solutions do we have? Opening this to the floor."

Eddie and Pablo both frown in exactly the same way at exactly the same time. They're not brothers. In fact they couldn't look more different from each other — Eddie is short and pale and round-faced and has the personality of a golden retriever, while Pablo is tall and Mexican, long-haired and bearded. But they joined the company as software developers at the same time and have acted like twins ever since.

They're damn good at what they do, but unfortunately, it's not accounting.

Gina's face isn't exactly full of sunshine either. She is my accountant, and she's been cheering us on from the start. "Well," she says like she's about to deliver terrible news, "unfortunately, we need investors. We're doing great for a small company, but it would do us a world of good if we could get some kind of deal with a bigger company. I've made a list of some potential options, but at this point, the bigger the company we can net, the better."

She pushes the list to all our tablets, and I glance over it — there's some of the big online payment companies, some of the other big online stores, and then there's the tech giants. We'd be lucky if Lockhart or Donnell's would even glance in our direction. And on principle, I ignore the fact that Fletcher Tech is on there at all.

Eddie pitches in, "We could put together a real good packet, showcase the work we've got done. Make a real professional-looking thing to show us off."

Pablo nods in agreement. "We could send it to everyone. Make a splash. Get our name out there."

"Love the enthusiasm, guys," I say, and mean it. I've been so lucky to get this team. They all work so hard and care so much. There have been multiple nights where I've had to round them up and send them home, forcibly. We've all given our everything to this.

It breaks my heart to imagine us failing.

"Enthusiasm isn't funding, though," says Gina, the voice of reason. "An information packet is a good idea, but we have to be realistic. What do we really want out of this? Where are we going next? What do we have to do to get there?"

"What happens if we don't?" adds Kelly, throwing a bucket of cold water over the already shaky mood.

We sit in silence, contemplating the questions, turning them over in our minds. Because the fact is simple: if we don't succeed, we go home with nothing except four wasted years on a business that wasn't good enough.

I don't want to let the team down like that. But as I look at the faces of my colleagues and friends all wearing various depths of frowns, my heart sinks even lower.

The truth is, we're on a cliff edge, and if I let myself fall into the abyss, I'm going to drag everyone down with me.