Page 77 of Love JD

Isla:

All good.

Zev:

You’re worrying me. Are you having a

flare up? Do you need anything?

Isla:

No just busy.

Except she really didn’t have anything to be “busy” with. She’d sent in her finals and wouldn’t have any classwork for months. My intuition told me something was wrong, but I was trapped in these damn meetings all morning.

We’d made some progress with Earth Care and GreenTech both. Rather than calling everything off and feeding into the press frenzy airing on every major news network, Earth Care had decided to negotiate terms that would effectively shut down the illegal operations in Myanmar and help the employees for GreenTech keep their jobs. Earth Care didn’t have to do that, but in a sea of smarmy sharks, they really were the cute little dolphin corporate moguls who gave a shit. Also, it did make them look like the hero in this situation, which was always good for PR.

The only snag we were hitting was the buying price. Earth Care insisted on cutting the acquisition cost down to sixty percent of what they’d originally offered. It was reasonable on their end—it would take capital to clean up this mess. But GreenTech knew that their upper tiers couldn’t line their pockets the way they wanted without that extra forty percent. I was in favor of taking whatever Earth Care offered them, but it wasn’t helping matters that Earth Care didn’t want anything to do with me. Again, rightfully so, because I guessed that GreenTech had seen my silence as loyalty to their cause, so they hadn’t fired me.

Azura had begged me to see this shit through and salvage our firm’s reputation. So, I had. I’d stayed and sat through tedious negotiations with petulant millionaires.

I honestly would rather get eaten by a rancor in Jabba’s death pit than sit here and help these scumbags, I thought acidly. But I’d gotten us into this disaster—mostly—so I’d get us back out if I could.

“The best we can offer is an earnout agreement,” the young CFO of Earth Care offered.

I resisted the urge to snort. That was way more generous than GreenTech deserved, but I had my doubts about their operations paying off for Earth Care anyway. I doubted they would make enough revenue to have anything left over for future performance payments to GreenTech.

“Tied to gross?” the COO to my left asked in his wet voice.

“Net,” Starla glared. She had been negotiating with me like this was life or death and I gave a shit. I rolled my eyes. Obviously net profit. Idiots.

“Maybe we should take a break,” the CEO of Earth Care suggested. The woman had the brains of a scientist and the guts of any heavyweight corporate goon, and I admired the hell out of her. On the outside, with her frizzy, gray-streaked dark hair and painfully thin build, she screamed “off-grid mushroom farmer,” but she’d proven herself to be a sharp negotiator thus far.

The room mumbled an agreement about taking a break, and I pulled out my phone again. I didn’t bother getting up from my chair and sent off a text to Isla.

Zev:

Can we video chat? I miss your face.

I waited nervously for her to respond. The urge to fly back home and make sure she was alright nearly overwhelmed my logic. I knew I needed to stay and see this through. It would be insane to leave. Our firm would go under. No one worth their weight in stocks would want to work with us again. We’d lose thousands.

Isla:

Just getting in the shower.

Fear snaked around my anxiety with an insidious crawl. This wasn’t right. It wasn’t like Isla to be so standoffish.

“I should have known you’d blow this,” Starla drawled. She had come around the table, and with the room empty of occupants, she perched on the edge of the boardroom table.

Earth Care’s boardroom looked like a parody of a hippie company’s idea of a corporate space. One wall behind me had been covered with moss. Literal, living, growing moss. It got spritzed with overhead sprinklers every once in a while and made the air smell like peat and soil. The other wall overlooked Seattle with floor-to-ceiling windows fringed with hanging, potted plants. It was… cute. I guess.

I rotated an irritated glower her way. “Are you gloating or something?”

She nudged my thigh with her shiny, white pumps. “You’re very grumpy.”

“I’m very not in the mood,” I muttered. I typed back a message to Isla.

Zev:

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