“If necessary, yes,” I say honestly. “It’s not a part of the process we enjoy, but organizations often have vestiges of previous takeovers, projects, re-organizations. Often times those can be a drain on a company’s potential growth.”
Audrey cocks her head. “Did you know? When we met at that bar?”
“Know what?”
“That I’d just been at the Globe for an interview that very day?”
This time, I can’t hide my smile. “Do you think I personally vet every person this company hires? Because I can assure you, I don’t have that kind of time.”
It echoes the text I’d jokingly sent her earlier, after I’d tried coffee the way she’d pestered me to, saying it was the best. It wasn’t. Like so many things, we disagreed.
She must hear it too, because her cheeks flush with color. “Right. Of course you don’t.”
“Go on,” I say. “Ask me anything else for the newsletter.”
Her eyes meet mine. Flustered, challenged, annoyed. And intrigued. Try as she may to act aloof, she’s interested, just as she’d been standing next to me at the bar.
I know what she says next will surprise me. She always does.
“What’s your exit strategy?” she asks.
Both my eyebrows rise. “We’ve just bought the company. We’re not thinking of selling it anytime soon.”
“But you will, one day,” she says. “That’s the strategy of venture capitalist firms, if I understand them correctly, Mr. Kingsley.”
“Mr. Kingsley?”
“We should be professional,” she says.
“We should,” I agree. “I will lodge a formal complaint with HR about your atrocious taste in coffee.”
Her eyes flare. “You should have used one and a half pumps. But don’t deflect. What’s your exit strategy?”
“Is that really a question on that little sheet of yours?”
“Mr. Kingsley,” she warns.
“You’ve got the stamina to be a journalist,” I mutter, but I lean back in my chair and consider her question. It’s a fair one. Perhaps not something I want to have announced to the world yet, though. “There is one,” I say. “Suffice it to say that Acture is committed to seeing the Globe as a booming, one-stop source for news, a place that has as solid a future as it has a renowned past, before we consider letting go of the reins.”
“Cashing in on your profits,” she translates. “Right?”
I smile at her. She knows I can’t answer that.
Reluctantly, she sighs, looking down at her notepad. “This interview doesn’t contain much substance.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “That’s not what your co-workers are looking for right now.”
She taps her pen against the notepad. “They want reassurance, and information, and I don’t have either of those things yet.”
“Yes, you do,” I correct her. “Not in the way you want it, perhaps. But you can tell them that there is someone at the top who has a vision and a plan. They’re bound to be nervous after hearing about people getting fired.”
Audrey pauses in her writing, eyes meeting mine. I can’t decipher what’s in hers. “Wow,” she says. “You really mean that, don’t you?”
“Yes. Why wouldn’t I?”
She shakes her head and keeps writing, and my fingers tap annoyedly at the glass desk. It had been a standard answer for me.
“You’re young to be this successful,” she says, head still bowed. “Only thirty-two and CEO of this company.”