Page 65 of Broken Brothers

I caught a brief glimpse on his phone that showed one of his programmers was calling him. I took the opportunity to look down at my phone and see that not only was I confused by the one text, I got confused by two texts.

See, they said the same thing.

“Meet up soon?”

But one came from Layla and one came from Claire.

The context immediately before that particular message was rather drastic. Layla and I had at least reached a point of civility,and perhaps she saw it as me finally being open to meeting her again. Claire was doing it under the guise of business.

You know, you’re assuming a lot. It’s not as if Layla has actually expressed an interest in getting back together. She’s just apologized.

And Claire… well, let’s not go down that rabbit hole.

I locked my phone and looked back at Andrew. I didn’t know what the numbers would show yet, but the idea of an acquisition or at least an investment larger than 10 percent seemed like the most obvious choice at this point. Maybe Andrew wouldn’t sell the majority of shares in the company, but we could easily acquire enough to hold voting power.

The opp was too good. The chance was too good. The timing was too good.

I just had to hope that we didn’t get usurped, as I had last time, at the last second.

And if we did…

Well, I wasn’t going to take it as easily as I had with the Taylors and Burnson Investments.

28

Over the next three days, Andrew and I sat down and hammered out a couple of options that he said he needed time to figure out.

The first one was $5 million but with a 30 percent purchase. That would leave us second only to Andrew, who would own 42 percent of the company. It would allow us to have a say, but not necessarily to have control of the company. It was the best I could get, but knowing Andrew, it was also something I was willing to take on.

See, I had in my head that the kind of growth Virtual Realty could have would come after Andrew exited his role as CEO. Oh, he was invaluable to the team as a visionary for the product. I would have paid him $1 million a year out of the Hunts’ retirement fund just to keep him around. But as a CEO? He needed a little bit more seasoning.

Maybe I needed a little more seasoning as an investor, especially given that this was just our second deal—not yet even completed—and my first couple of ones, well, I had a little bit of trouble keeping my dick in my pants. But I couldn’t spend time contemplating that. I had to move, I had to move fast, and Ihad to move with purpose—contemplation and reflection would come at the appropriate time.

Andrew liked that idea best, although he was uneasy about me eventually purchasing more shares. That, however, was the point, and I had to admit, I began to feel a little like Edwin Hunt here.

In the back of my mind, I knew that in two, three years, the company likely would not have the kind of growth Andrew would have hoped for with him at the helm. Once we hit that point where we realized we had not achieved that profitability, I would be able to make a move, put myself or someone else in the company, and then watch it explode. It was a little Machiavellian, sure, but it was also from an honest place in that I wasn’t making the move to fuck over Andrew but actually to help him.

The second option was $1 million at a hair over six percent. This option would keep us as passive investors, and while Andrew was paranoid about me coming in and having a larger say than he was comfortable with, he was equally uncomfortable with the idea of us investing and being nothing more than a dollar amount. Plus, $1 million for his company would only go about ten months before it burned out—it wasn’t long enough for them to generate self-sustainability.

I had given him the second option to make him feel like he had choices, but I think we both knew that only one option was really viable—the $5 million for 30 percent one.

Well, in the context of us, that was true. In the context of all funding options, that wasn’t true. I had to hold my nose and hope Morgan worked his friendship enough and that I had made a good enough impression on Andrew to give us a fighting chance.

When I boarded the plane that Thursday morning, I felt pretty good about where we stood. We had not agreed toanything, but Andrew’s words and actions suggested that he had great interest in joining us. We joked, we laughed, and we bonded over things like growing up in rich families, travels, and the pressures of having to succeed from overbearing parents. It was surprisingly vulnerable and honest, but I never let myself lose focus on the task at hand—sealing the deal.

Sealing the deal in a polite, win-win manner, not in an Edwin Hunt-style manner.

Just before I boarded the plane, my phone rang. With a sigh, not really looking forward to more questions about hanging out this weekend, I grabbed it. But it was not Layla or Claire.

It was Morgan.

“Hey, what’s going on?” I said.

“Where are you?”

He sounded flustered and worried, as if someone had just told him I was being held hostage.

“I’m at the airport, our plane’s boarding in about ten minutes.”