Chương 8
Claire remembered Richard’s warning. Teddy’s wife. Chemotherapy.
“How is Carla?”
“Mean as ever. So pretty good.”
A younger worker called Teddy over. Claire stood beside the humming machine, watching a strip of maple veneer move through rollers.
Richard found her there.
He did not raise his voice. That would have drawn attention, and he never wasted anger without control.
“My office,” he said.
Claire removed the safety glasses. “I was leaving.”
“Now.”
They walked upstairs without speaking. His office overlooked the factory through a wide interior window. On one wall hung photographs of completed projects: curved walnut panels in a performing arts center, white oak reception desks in a hospital, mahogany doors for a hotel in New Orleans.
Richard closed the door.
“Your lawyer told you not to come here.”
Claire looked at him. “How do you know who told me what?”
“I know how transactions work.”
“She told you?”
“No.”
“Then don’t state guesses as facts.”
He went behind his desk. “You have been removed from the deal.”
“Recused.”
“Removed.”
“Yes.”
“Cypress Ridge sent a notice suspending diligence. Our lender received a copy because the lender consent is part of the process. They called this morning.”
Claire had not known the notice would go out so quickly.
“What did the bank say?”
“They requested updated borrowing-base information and a meeting Monday.”
“Can you satisfy them?”
“That is no longer your concern.”
“It is if the company cannot operate.”
“You made it your concern when you told eighty people you were saving them.”
“I never told them that.”
“You told me.”
“In the study.”
“And now you are wandering the floor letting them think whatever they think.”
Claire stepped closer to the desk. “Why did the company’s diligence file identify Mercer Family Holdings as a creditor without identifying the trust?”
“Because the holding company made the loan.”
“With trust money.”
“The funds were legally in the holding company.”
“After you transferred them there.”
Richard’s fingers flattened on the desk. “You do not understand the distinction between mismanagement and survival.”
“I understand that you expect survival to erase consent.”
He looked toward the factory floor. “Do you know what happened the week I used that money? Not from a spreadsheet. Do you know?”
“No.”
“Payroll was four hundred eighteen thousand. Our largest customer owed us nine hundred thirty. The bank froze advances because an auditor questioned two receivables. We had lumber arriving, subcontractors calling, and thirty-seven employees who would not make rent if a check bounced. Your mother’s retirement account had already been pledged. I had a buyer interested in a parcel behind the warehouse, and I believed it would close in sixty days.”
“Did it?”
“The city denied access.”
“So you made a bad decision.”
“I made the only decision available.”
“You could have called me.”
“You were speaking at a conference in San Diego about responsible capital.”
Claire’s face warmed.
He had saved that detail for four years.
“How did you know where I was?”
“Your mother showed me the program.”
“Then you knew how to reach me.”
“I knew what you would say.”
“You keep using that as permission.”
“I knew you would rather let the company fail than admit you still belonged to it.”
Claire looked through the window. A forklift reversed below, its blue warning light sliding across the concrete.
“I left because you offered me half the salary you offered Nathan Cole for the same job.”
“You had no manufacturing experience.”
“I had worked here every summer since I was fifteen.”
“You worked in the office.”
“I rebuilt the project-costing model you still use.”
“You were twenty-two.”
“And Nathan was twenty-four.”
“He had a degree in industrial engineering.”
“I had a degree in finance.”
“He was not my daughter.”
The words remained between them.
Richard seemed to hear them after he spoke. His shoulders shifted.
Claire nodded once. “That was always the qualification I couldn’t fix.”
“You wanted authority you had not earned.”
“I wanted the chance to earn it.”
“You had every chance.”
“At your table, with your name, under your rules.”
He came around the desk. “And now you return with a private-equity fund and call it generosity.”
“I found a buyer willing to preserve the plant.”
“You found a way to own the thing I would not give you.”
“I will own none of it.”
“You work for them.”
“I hold no investment committee vote on this transaction. I waived my transaction bonus. I disclosed every contact.”
“How noble.”
“No. Expensive.”
The answer surprised him.
Claire had not told anyone in the family that the deal would have generated a bonus large enough to pay off her mortgage. She had waived it to avoid the appearance that she was profiting from a transaction involving her parents. Evan had told her she was being unnecessarily strict. Naomi had said unnecessary strictness was sometimes the price of credibility.
Richard looked toward the acquisition photos on the wall. “What happens now?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do know. You know how Cypress Ridge behaves when diligence finds an issue.”
“They investigate.”
“They reduce price.”
“Possibly.”
“They increase escrow.”
“Yes.”
“They demand I remain personally liable.”
“Maybe.”
“Say it.”
Claire did not.
He turned back. “This is what you came for.”
“No.”
“To finally put your name above mine.”
“There will be no Mercer name after the acquisition.”
The pain in his face was immediate and unguarded.
For one second, Claire saw the cost she had avoided naming. The company would become Cypress Architectural Systems. The Mercer sign would come down. Richard’s office would be repainted, his photographs removed, his methods absorbed into someone else’s operating manual.
He recovered quickly.
“You should leave,” he said.
Claire moved toward the door.
“Claire.”
She stopped.
“If the sale proceeds,” he said, “I will repay the trust in full.”
“That is not enough.”
“What else do you want? Interest?”
“An accounting. Disclosure. Mom protected. Vanessa informed.”
“And humiliation.”
May you like
“That part is not mine to arrange.”
She left him standing before the window.
