He opens the folder just enough for me to see the charts. Clean lines. Projections. Control.
“You spin this right,” he says, “and Sunrise and Soul become the engine for her dream. She gets her soul. Hell, we brand it “Baking with Soul.” And you get scale.”
He sits back, pleased.
“Everybody wins.”
I shake my head, but doubt is already creeping in, worming past my defenses.
“She wants it to stand on its own,” I say. “Without outside interference.”
Rex laughs. Soft. Pitying.
“Kid,” he says, “you’re a billionaire. Sustainable is for people who have to wait. You do not wait. You create the market.”
He taps the folder again.
“This funds any dream she has. In six months. Not six years. You get to be the hero. You get to give her everything.”
My chest tightens.
I think of Tess’s face when she showed me the spreadsheet. The fire in her voice. The way her hands shook just a little, like she was afraid I would dismiss it.
The way she shut down when I offered her money.
This is not just a check.
This is a system.
A structure.
A way to protect what she loves.
“But the quality,” I say quietly. “She would hate it if the quality dropped.”
“We will lock it down,” Rex says smoothly. “Controls so tight she could sign off on them herself. But to do that, we need leverage.”
He pulls out another document. Shorter. Simpler.
“A contingent Letter of Intent,” he says. “Not the final deal. Just the opening move. It secures our position. It protects her from other sharks.”
He meets my eyes, his gaze intense.
“Because trust me, Leo, with this buzz, they are already circling. If you do not do this, someone else will. And they will not care about her soul. Or her. We need to do this to make this project of yours make sense to the outside world.”
He slides a heavy, expensive pen across the table.
I stare at it.
I think of Tess’s disappointment. The way her shoulders tensed. The way she said it, without you, like it cost her something to say it.
I tried to do it her way. The slow way. The small way.
And I failed.
So, I will do it my way.
The big way.
