Then I set my alarm for five and went to bed.
TWENTY-FOUR
NADIA
The lawyer's name was Patricia Holt, and she had a calm, measured delivery that probably cost extra. Oh, who was I kidding? It would cost extra.
"Both complaints are formal filings," she said, laying the documents across my prep table like she was laying place settings. "The health department one is the more serious of the two on paper, but given your inspection record, it's also the more defensible. The licensing board complaint is more involved. It will require a written response within thirty days."
"And your fee for helping me draft that response?"
She quoted a number. I kept my face neutral, the way I'd learned to do in the Army when a superior told you something you didn't want to hear.
"I see," I said.
"I understand it's significant. But leaving the complaints unanswered isn't an option. No response is treated as an admission."
After she left, I sat in my empty industrial kitchen for a while. The prep tables gleamed under the fluorescent lights. Everything was clean, organized, and exactly where it should be. Years of work stacked neatly on stainless steel shelving.
Kelly had stood in my apartment two nights ago with the complaints on her tablet and the rest of it underneath. She'd been careful and kind about it, which told me she'd known which part was going to hurt. After she left, I'd spent approximately four minutes feeling sorry for myself before pulling up my accounting software.
The numbers were not good.
Losing Pacific Tech had hurt. The clients who'd drifted toward Elevate's pricing had hurt more. The emergency vendor calls during the Peterson dinner had cost more than I'd billed back. And now legal fees on top of a month where I was already running thin.
My parents' property tax bill was due in six weeks.
The phone had already delivered the morning's other news. Coastal Mutual's events manager, apologetic and awkward, asking whether everything was all right, because somebody had emailed her about us.
No signature, a webmail address that bounced when she replied, complaining about Coogan's stability and the regulatory attention we were apparently under. An hour later, the Albrights' assistant — near enough word for word.
Concerned.
Both messages had used the word concerned. I'd added them to the growing file of things I could prove had happened and couldn't prove had come from anywhere.
I was staring at the spreadsheet when my phone rang. A number I didn't recognize. I almost let it go to voicemail.
"Ms. Becker? This is Samantha Morrison from Elevate Events."
I set the phone on the table and looked at it before picking it back up. "Ms. Morrison."
"I hope I'm not catching you at a bad time." Her voice had that manufactured warmth people learn in sales training. "I wanted to reach out personally. I understand you've received some notifications from the health department and licensing board this week. I'm sure that's been stressful."
"Is there something I can help you with?"
"Actually, I was hoping we could meet. We've revised our offer, and I think you'll find the terms considerably more attractive than what we presented previously." I was ready to tell them to get lost when she continued. "Given the current circumstances, it seems like a good time to revisit the conversation."
Given the current circumstances. There it was.
"I'll hear what you have to say," I said.
She knocked at my kitchen an hour later, dressed the way Elevate people always seemed to be dressed. As if they were en route to somewhere more important.
The offer she laid out was better. Substantially better. A higher acquisition price, a longer transition period, a management contract with genuine autonomy over local operations.
I looked at the figures. Thought about Patricia Holt's fee. Thought about my parents' tax bill.
"There's one more thing I wanted to mention," Samantha said, smoothing a non-existent wrinkle from her jacket. "Markets like this one run on reputation. We've noticed you’ve been weathering some headwinds lately. Complaints. Talk. Clients get nervous around that sort of thing." She gave a small shrug. "Concerned."
