Page 94 of Smoke and Glitter

Chapter Seventeen

Sam

Doug gave me about a month. I've got a little less than two weeks left to figure out what I want to do with the Pilsen property. That number has gotten harder to ignore every morning. In theory it is so simple, just waiting on a signature from a man I haven't spoken to in three years. Just call the number that's sitting open on my phone. I could call him. That was never the problem. The problem is I know exactly how the conversation goes if I do it my way.

I start with the company. He says something that pisses me off. I bring up everything he left me holding. Eventually we get to Elise, because with him I always get to Elise. I still don't get the fucking signature. I set the phone on my desk and lean back in the chair.

The envelope is in the drawer beside my knee. I almost opened it days ago but I couldn't do it. Autumn told me she'd found a way through this. Now on principle I feel like a complete dick even considering using what she came up with after accusing her of interfering because it made me feel vulnerable.

I open the drawer. The envelope is exactly where I left it. This time, I take it out. For a minute I sit there with it in my hands, my thumb resting against the sealed flap, and then I open it. There are three pages inside. No note. No explanation. The first page starts with a title.

PILSEN. DISSOLUTION SEQUENCE AND SCRIPT.

There's a date underneath. I stare at it long enough to remember exactly where we were when she handed me the envelope. I asked why she went looking.

"And you went looking."

"I did."

"At me."

Then she asked me to let her be useful, and I told her I didn't need her help. Told her I didn't need her interfering in my life. I start reading.

The first section is WHAT THIS IS.

She lays out the old filing, the judgment and the signature that never happened. There's no legal bullshit I have to read three times to understand. She strips everything down to the only part that matters if I want the company gone and the bank moving again.

The legal piece is almost finished. What's missing is a reason for him to cooperate instead of letting the whole thing sit there because he can.

The next heading is WHO YOU CALL, AND IN WHAT ORDER.

Him. Directly. Not his attorney. Not mine. Not a letter from one office to another.

There's a paragraph underneath explaining why. If I start with a lawyer, he gets one. One missing signature becomes two sets of billing hours and another six months of both of us paying people to stay angry for us.

I almost laugh. Mostly because she's right. Then I reach the next section.

If he says no: counsel. Then it becomes a filing, and filings are public.

Underneath it, in smaller type:

You will not need to say that part out loud. He has a second location opening in September and eleven thousand people watching him do it. He already knows.

I read it again. She found the second restaurant. She found the opening, the social following, probably every article written about the place since he announced it. She found the thing he would least want attached to his name while he's trying to get another restaurant open. And then she built the conversation so I wouldn't have to use any of it. I turn the page.

WHAT HE GETS.

A clean ending. The company dissolved. The judgment dealt with. Nothing still sitting there under either of our names when his new place opens. That's the offer.

No threat. No apology required. No chance for me to spend twenty minutes explaining exactly what I think of him before he has a reason to say yes. I rub my hand over my mouth and keep reading. The rest is the call.

Autumn gives me an opening that doesn't start with we need to talk, followed by a note explaining that nobody in human history has heard those four words and expected something good.

I actually laugh. After that come the branches. If he gets defensive, go here. If he says he wants his lawyer to look at it, let him. If he says he thought the company was already dissolved, do not argue about whose fault it was.

Then:

You will want to. Come back to the signature.