"Your name comes off the building by Friday. Reed Capital owns 100% and installs new management. You walk away with your personal guarantees released. Your houses, your cars, you keep those because your wife shouldn't be on the street for your mistakes."
"But you walk away with no company and no title and no power over a single human being who works there ever again." Ethan's mouth worked. "You... You'd buy the company but cut me out completely?" "That's right."
"But it's my company. I built it. My name is on it." "You built it on debt, and you ran it into the ground, and you treated the people who run the place better than you do like furniture," Travis said flatly.
"You didn't build a company. You built a costume. A costume that says successful businessman. And you wore it everywhere around so people would look at you the way you wanted to be looked at."
"And the second somebody didn't play along—" He tapped his own chest. "—you couldn't stand it. The company was never the point, Ethan. The applause was the point, and I'm taking away the applause."
The cruelty of it, the precision of it, landed on Ethan harder than any threat of bankruptcy. Because Travis had seen straight through to the thing Ethan had never admitted even to himself. He didn't love the company. He loved being the man who owned it.
Travis was going to let him keep his house and his car and take away the only thing he'd ever actually wanted. "You can't do this," Ethan said, and there was a wild edge in it now. "You can't just... There are laws. There's a process."
"I have rights as the owner. I'll fight it. I'll get lawyers." "With what money?" Travis asked mildly.
"You're three weeks from broke. I have a building full of lawyers. You'll be in litigation for two years, you'll lose. And at the end of it, you'll have spent the houses I'm offering to let you keep on legal fees, and you'll still lose the company."
"Or," he spread his hands, "you sign, you keep your home, you keep your wife and her jewelry, and you go figure out who you are without a title for the first time in your adult life." He paused. "I'm not being cruel, Ethan. I'm being merciful, and you can't even tell the difference."
"That's how far gone you are." Vanessa put a hand on her husband's arm. "Ethan, take it." Her voice was hollow and exhausted.
"He's giving us the house. He's giving the employees their jobs. He's giving you a way out that doesn't end with us sleeping in the Rolls. Take it."
"Take it." "It's mine." "It was never yours," Vanessa said, and the words came out like something tearing.