Page 99 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

“It was a dream, totally,” Mandy continued. “I just never imagined she’d consider an investment from someone like me.”

“That was Babette,” Charlie said. “She wanted our first outside investor to be a fan. Picked you out of her DMs. She was always doing things her own way.”

“What made you take on investors in the first place?”

“CareFree.”

There was a pause, and Mandy feared she’d hit another dead end. But then Charlie kept talking. “The first twelve years, it was just her and me, bootstrapping the business with money we’d inherited from our parents. Then social media and direct-to-consumer blew open our industry, and Babette’s dreams got bigger. The last four years were breakneck. The Fierce line. Raw. Her book.”

“She became a star,” Mandy said.

“A supernova. Shining so bright it blinds you, pushing our team to the max. She’s one of those people who makes an absurd ask, and even if you know it’s impossible, you still want to hunt it down and bring it back to her wriggling between your teeth. We all want to do that.”

Wanted to, Mandy thought. She didn’t have the heart to say it out loud.

“Babette was making promises we couldn’t deliver on,” Charlie continued. “We needed more of a science foundation behind her claims of transformation. So I roped Devon in. She told me about datura. That’s when everything tipped.”

His eyes brightened, and a wisp of a smile graced his face.

“For the first time,” Charlie said, “I was the one with the dream. I was the one who saw the potential for CareFree. This isn’t just another face cream for us. CareFree is the next Xanax. It’s the next CBD. But we didn’t have the cash to live up to that opportunity.”

“So you decided to raise investment,” Guy piped up.

“Right. But Babette insisted on doing it backward. No banks. No consultants. She wouldn’t even go on Shark Tank. Instead, she put out a wide open call on her socials, inviting anyone who wanted to to get in touch. No screen for qualified investors. No screen at all. We were flooded with ridiculous offers, kids with their piggy banks, fans with the Babette logo tattooed on their thigh.”

“She sought investors who really care about your company,” Mandy said. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it,” Charlie said. “It’s brilliant, really. Amateurs are easy to control, and they make for great press. Look at you—wide-eyed high school teacher, aspirational customer—socials eat that up.”

Mandy bristled at the idea that she might be nothing more than a prop in Babette’s campaign. But it was her dad who came to her defense.

“Not everyone who got involved was an amateur,” Guy said.

“Oh, right,” Charlie said. “There were criminals too.”

“Hey,” Guy objected. “I connected Babette to Stefan.”

“True.” Charlie searched her dad’s eyes for the answer to a question he didn’t ask. “And look how that turned out.”

“I’m not the one who killed her,” Guy snapped back. “Or him.”

“Neither am I.”

A note of tension hummed in the air between the two men. But Charlie’s story wasn’t over. Mandy still didn’t understand how everything was connected. She needed to loosen the wire.

“How did the investments change things?” she asked.

“It meant more money, of course. The investors we brought in—and yes, Stefan represented the biggest—turbocharged our development of CareFree. Renovated labs, bigger marketing budgets, more sophisticated supply chains. We went from growing fast to growing huge. But investors have expectations. Babette’s seat-of-her-pants management style wasn’t as popular in the boardroom as it was on the internet.”

“Stefan wanted a more conventional captain, didn’t he?” Guy was smiling now. “And you saw an opportunity to take a spin at the wheel.”

Charlie stiffened.

“I get it,” Guy continued. “Your sister gets the sunshine while you’re sweeping up broken glass in the back alley. Then you get this billion-dollar idea for CareFree. And she takes all the credit.”

“I didn’t care about credit,” Charlie said.

“Of course not,” Guy said. He could be generous when he needed to be. “You just wanted to protect what you were building.”