The lead attorney, Daniel, cleared his throat softly. "Mr. Reed, do you want to handle the signing now, or—" "Give me a minute, Daniel. I'm having a conversation." Travis didn't take his eyes off Ethan.
"Forty-one million in revenue, you said that. Pretty proud of it." "I..." Ethan swallowed. "That's... yes. Whitmore Holdings. We're in commercial real estate, and—"
"I know what you're in." Travis tapped the leather folder under his arm. "You want to know something funny? You want to know why I came here today? Personally, on a Saturday, riding 400 miles through the desert, when I could have sent any one of these gentlemen to handle it?"
Ethan didn't answer. He didn't want to know. Every instinct in his body was screaming that he did not want to know. "I came because of this folder," Travis said.
"There's an acquisition in here, a company my people have been looking at for eight months. A real estate outfit that overextended itself buying buildings at the top of the market, took on a mountain of debt to do it, and started missing payments about a year ago." He pulled the folder out from under his arm and looked at the cover almost lazily. "Company's about three weeks from going under."
"Couldn't make payroll last month. Took a bridge loan from a lender that doesn't forgive late payments. You know the type." The courtyard had gone so quiet you could hear the fountain.
Ethan Whitmore's face had changed. The arrogance was gone, now replaced by something raw and animal. The look of a man who has just felt the floor shift under his feet and doesn't yet know how far the fall goes. "What's the name of the company?" Ethan said.
It wasn't really a question. His voice had gone flat and small. Travis opened the folder. He looked down at the top page.
He read the name out loud, slow and clear, so everyone in that silent courtyard could hear every syllable. "Whitmore Holdings." Vanessa made a sound like she'd been hit. Ethan's knees actually buckled.
He caught himself on the side of his white Rolls-Royce, one hand flat against the door, and he stared at the old biker like the man had reached into his chest and shown him his own heart. "That's... no," Ethan said. "No, that's not... We have a deal in place. We have a buyer."
"Reed Capital. They have the term sheet. We signed a term sheet. You're buying us."
"You're bailing us out. The deal closes Monday." "The deal closes when I sign this folder," Travis said gently, "and I haven't signed it yet." The full horror of it crashed over Ethan all at once.
Travis watched it happen. Watched the man do the math. Watched him realize that the dirty biker he'd spent 10 minutes humiliating in front of 60 people was not just the owner of the club, was not just a billionaire, but was the one single human being on Earth who held the entire future of the Whitmore family in his hands. The mortgages, the houses, the cars, Vanessa's jewelry, all of it borrowed against a company that was three weeks from the grave.