Page 102 of Skins Game

Yes, Kingston was the hero who saved companies by jousting with the dragons of insolvency and inefficiency. He raised them from the dead like a mage.

Kingston’s good opinion is the only thing standing between Sidewinder and immediate closure.

It was.

And Kingston’s opinionwasthe only thing saving them, not logic or business sense, because?—

The math doesn’t math.

Morrissey was telling Kingston he was fucking it up.

If he’d said that during the meeting with Jericho and Mitchell, they’d have known what a fuck-up Kingston was. Morrissey had let him save face, but he was telling him his real opinion of Sidewinder Golf.

The math doesn’t math.

Morrissey was right. It didn’t.

Sidewinder was a failing company circling the drain if you calculated the math using only the scheduled products and employees Sidewinder had.

Last Chance was shoveling good money after bad into the company.

For any other business deal, Kingston would have insisted they terminate Sidewinder immediately. It was a money pit.

A gaping, sucking chest wound of a money pit.

Morrissey, Jericho, and Mitchell were relying on Kingston to win the damn bet.

Jericho was the spreadsheet king of fundamentals who could lay down a solid ROI for decades.

Mitchell found hidden value in companies and utilized it with creativity that was unseen in usual business dealings.

Morrissey and his legal skills could rip apart a business plan or a contract and analyze it like an equation, understanding exactly where the most minor loopholes could be exploited.

But Kingston was the sharpshooter business guy, the assassin, the one who could spy long-range business deals like he had a sniper’s scope, the one who made the thousand-fold deals on the regular, the one everyone thought hadthe chanceto win the bet.

And he was fucking it up.

Kingston knew it. He’d admitted it to Nicole the night before.

I am all too aware that I am teetering on the brink of destroying everything I have because I would rather lay it at your feet than do what must be done.

But he didn’t think Morrissey and the guys knew it.

In his stupor, in his romantic detachment from reality, he’d lost track of time.

And time was running out.

Kingston had delayed as long as he could, longer than he should have, waiting for Sidewinder’s bottom line to change.

It hadn’t.

Liquidating Sidewinder would result in a loss, which meant there was no way he could win the Shark’s bet.

Kingston rolled off the bed, landing on the floor with his toes, and pulled on his pants and the fluffy hotel robe wadded up on the floor.

Pressing the bedroom door closed so he didn’t wake Nicole up was simple.

Pulling her laptop computer out of her backpack on the coffee table and logging in with his all-access administrator account and password was easier still.