Chapter 2
Three days later, Lydia sat across from me in Northline's main conference room.
Her proposal filled the screen behind her. The packaging was polished. The sales deck was polished. The numbers were not.
I slid the report across the table.
"Your retail expansion is too aggressive."
Lydia folded her hands. "Sales are growing."
"Not fast enough for the inventory you're asking Northline to carry."
Ethan sat beside me. "She's not asking us to buy the whole brand."
"No. She's asking for our distribution network, marketing support, and working capital. If her forecast misses by fifteen percent, we hold the inventory and the cash gap."
Lydia looked at Ethan instead of me.
"I knew this wouldn't be an easy sell."
He smiled. "Hard doesn't mean impossible."
Usually he would pull the report closer, circle a number, and make me defend it.
Today, he barely looked at the page.
"We could run a small trial," he said.
"We could. There's no business reason to do it yet."
His smile disappeared.
"Northline isn't the little shop we were running ten years ago."
I waited.
"You don't have to treat every decision like we're one bad week from missing payroll."
My hand stopped on the report.
There had been a month when we were exactly that close. I had delayed my own pay. Ethan had sold his watch. We spent a Friday night at the office deciding which invoices could wait until Monday.
He had asked me then, "Scared?"
"Yes."
He had pushed half a cold sandwich toward me. "Me too."
We showed up again the next morning.
I pulled the report back toward me.
"A bigger company can lose bigger money."
Lydia leaned back. "I always knew you'd make it, Ethan."
He turned to her.
"You could have nothing and still make people believe you were going somewhere."
I looked at her.
"If you always knew, why did you leave when his first company failed?"
Her smile vanished.
"It wasn't that simple."
"Claire," Ethan said.
The warning in his voice was familiar. I looked at him.
"Lydia had her reasons. I was buried in debt. I didn't have a real plan. She was allowed to decide what she could handle."
Years ago, Ethan had described that breakup as the lowest point of his life.
Now he was defending it for her.
I closed the report.
"My recommendation is no."
Ethan looked at the screen, then at the management team.
"Prepare a ninety-day partnership model. Limited distribution. Controlled capital. I want options by Friday."
I stared at him.
He hadn't found a flaw in my numbers.
He simply went around them.
The meeting ended ten minutes later. Lydia gathered her papers. I left first.
The conference-room door was nearly shut when Ethan's voice came through the gap.
"Don't worry, Lydia."
A beat.
"We'll find a way to make it work."