Chapter 6

The news of Emily's promotion to associate director of the commercial center came from an insider at HarperTech.

It was the twelfth day of our divorce processing period.

She was twenty-six, had been with the company for three years, and had worked her way up from a marketing intern to a brand manager.

The promotion itself wasn't totally out of line. HarperTech was expanding rapidly, so there were plenty of young managers.

But what really set off the office gossip was that she was taking over several areas I had coordinated for years.

Brand management, channel relations, and external communications for major joint projects were all rolled into the commercial center.

David sent over the new organizational chart. [Mr. Harper said we can't rely on personal connections anymore. We need to standardize everything.]

I took a glance. [Looks good.]

[Emily held a meeting this afternoon and said a lot of our old terms lacked institutional backing, so everything has to be renegotiated from scratch.]

I let out a soft chuckle. [Sounds good.]

David finally replied after a long pause: [You seriously have nothing to say about this?]

[She's not my problem anymore.]

I set my phone aside. Rowan's company files were laid out across the table. I had already signed the consulting contract.

The first phase called for a brand repositioning, so I had been spending the past few days interviewing their product and sales leads.

When I used to do this kind of work for HarperTech, James usually only looked at the final draft. He trusted me, and I was used to filtering out all the headaches for him beforehand.

Now, working with a new company, I had to build every process from the ground up instead. I had to document the interview outlines and meeting minutes and do the competitive analysis myself.

It was packed. But it was also exciting.

*****

At three in the afternoon, I was in a meeting at the client's office. My phone was on silent.

By the time the meeting wrapped up, there were six missed calls on my screen. Four were from David, and two were from James.

I called David back first. "What's going on?"

"The co-branding project with Homewise fell through."

Homewise was one of the biggest smart home brands in the country. HarperTech had run a co-branded campaign with them two years ago that racked up huge sales. They were planning to roll out another round this year.

"Why?"

"Emily scrapped the original rebate structure."

I stood outside the conference room holding a pen. "On what grounds?"

"She said the extra 5% rebate wasn't covered in the contract."

"Then there isn't."

"That's exactly what Homewise said too." David let out a bitter laugh. "So they're strictly treating this as a standard procurement now.

"All the original co-marketing, offline placements, and member reach-outs are off the table."

I didn't say anything. That extra rebate indeed wasn't written into the standard public contract template. It was something Grace Lane, the head of marketing over at Homewise, and I had cooked up together three years ago.

Back then, HarperTech was only making a name for itself, and our distribution reach was still weak. Homewise had the user base and the brick-and-mortar stores.

HarperTech was willing to sacrifice a bigger cut of the profits, and in exchange, they brought customers and physical store presence to the table.

Both sides made bank that first year, so we kept the ball rolling ever since.

After that, we simply extended it through supplementary agreements each year.

If Emily pulled the plug on the rebate, Homewise was naturally going to claw back those extra perks. Both sides were well within their rights.

"David, this is your new business policy," I said.

"I know," he replied.

"Then stick to the script."

"Mr. Harper already called Emily into his office."

"You don't need to report back to me."

"Force of habit." He chuckled dryly after saying that. "I'll break it going forward."

The moment I hung up, James dialed in. "Where are you?"

"At a client's office."

"Which client?"

"My client."

There was a brief silence on his end. "Did you hear about the Homewise situation?"

"Just did."

"Grace pulled all their resources off the table."

"Off-the-books perks can be pulled anytime."

"Set up a meeting with her for me."

"James." I flipped open my meeting notes, talking as I walked. "Your team just announced that everything goes by the book from now on. Asking me to step in and play the old-pals card now completely contradicts that."

His voice turned icy. "Emily just took over. She isn't familiar with the finer points of our past deals."

"Then let her get up to speed."

"Susan, you had to start somewhere when you first took over, too."

"Which is exactly why I know what she needs to go through."

The sound of a chair scraping back came through the line "So you're going to sit back and watch the company take a hit over these technicalities?"

"There's no such thing as taking a hit in normal business negotiations. You cut the rebate, so they cut the extra perks. Just run the numbers and start fresh."

James stayed silent for a good while. "Come by tonight."

"I still have work to do."

"Emily wants to talk to you."

I stopped in my tracks. "About what?"

"The old partnership files."

"They're all in the company system."

"A lot of the details aren't there."

I thought about it. He was right.

Some partnerships had spanned years, with much of the communication happening over dinners, phone calls, and last-minute tweaks.

Still, there was no secret sauce behind it. It was simply built on knowing who owed whom a favor, what mattered most to each firm, and which clients hated last-minute pitch changes.

"Have her go through the system files first. If she still has questions, she can book me as a consultant, and I'll bill by the hour," I said.

James sounded like he hadn't heard me right. "What?"

"If you need my professional consulting, I charge by the hour."

"Are you seriously going to bill me for this, Susan?"

"I'm billing the company."

He let out a sharp breath. "Are you really that desperate for money?"

"I've been pretty strapped for time lately."

He hung up on me.