“Yeah, you definitely should,” Kara urges, faux earnestness. “I actually heard Petrov say he was looking for you, that this deal couldn’t go through without you in the room.”
“Must have been right after I heard him say he was going to fire you?”
“That was actually talk of my promotion you overheard. I’m about to be your boss—”
“Somehow, I think he’ll manage to get by without either of you,” Michael replies.
“Michael’s just sore that he got iced out of the call,” Lili explains, hiding a smile.
Kara laughs, delighted. “Seems like he’s doing fine without you, too, Mike, eh?”
He makes an irritated sound. “I told you, I will not respond to that name—”
“Gustav Tang, pleasure to meet you,” the unfamiliar man interrupts, introducing himself to Lili with a brilliant smile. “I don’t believe we’ve met?”
“Lili Marwan,” she supplies, shaking his hand. “I’m—”
“Part of a new recruitment scheme,” Michael interjects, dryly. “Petrov is mentoring grad students.”
“She’s Petrov’s date,” Andrew corrects as he rejoins the group. He rests a hand on his husband’s shoulder. “Lili, Tang leads our work in China, oversees our onshore mutual fund there. It’s much of the work we’re being awarded for tonight. And you’ve met Kara—”
Lili’s face burns a little, remembering the argument Kara and Andrew had been unsuspecting bystanders to. “Right, um—about the other night, at the Greenes’ fundraiser. That was rude of us, I really am sorry—”
Kara waves a hand; her smile is warm, edged with mischief. “Don’t be. It’s lovely to see you again. Sometimes I want to yell at him, too. I’m glad someone can.”
“How’s the call?” Michael asks Andrew.
“It’s fine, he’s wrapping up.”
“What’s it looking like? Is it going south?”
“Their management team is just spooked. They’re running around screaming like a bunch of fresh MBAs.”
“What’s happening?” Lili asks.
Kara explains: “We got vaguely blindsided—”
“Blindsided,” Michael mutters, with skeptical distaste. “Someone needs to be fired.”
“—by an attempted hostile takeover of a firm we’re about to acquire,” Kara continues, ignoring him. “By another PE firm—Apollo, gross, right?”
Lili frowns. “Is it serious?”
Kara scoffs. “No, not really. We’d come out better for it, honestly, if they go all in like this, and we walked away. No, it’s the perception of it: Petrov hates it when people try to undercut our private equity. He came up through it.”
Lili raises an eyebrow. “So, it’s all ego?”
Kara winks. “As is this entire industry, yes. What’s Petrov thinking?” she asks, looking at Andrew as he accepts a glass of champagne from a server.
“At this point, he’s about to force-feed the board a poison pill.”
“Huh. Dilution wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world,” Tang comments.
Kara wrinkles her nose. “No, get us out—clean our hands of it before it becomes a complete Benghazi.”
Andrew inclines his head. “Well, yes, but it’s the principle of it for him. He’d rather go scorched earth, bury them with debt, lose all value in the asset, than have people think we can be fucked over.”
“Careful!” Tang warns, with a laughing look at Lili. “You’re going to scare her off.”
