She continues, "And this sort of scandal would … ruin you," she drags the word 'ruin' out for emphasis.
"Unless?" I ask, because it's clear that there's an 'unless' lurking under the surface and that she wants something.
"Good. Now you understand," she says, and I can almost hear her face contort into a smile. Can snakes smile? I wonder. "Unless you remove your backing from Dirty Lil' Angels."
"I can't do that," I snap back. There's no fucking way I'm going to allow her to dictate my investments.
"Remove your backing or every major media outlet in the city will have this story on their desks," she says, "and believe me, reporters would salivate for a story like this."
"Like what, exactly?" I ask, calling her bluff.
"Just think. This is your daughter, and … son," she continues. "What kind of man … no, what kind of a father does that? And not only will you be revealed to the public as a fraud, but as a pervert too."
Venomous. Plain and simple.
The way her words manipulate the story,
and paint the situation into something horrible sounding, makes my stomach clench.
I don't know why I ever married this woman. What did I ever see in her?
She doesn't wait for me to respond. Instead, she continues, "But it doesn't have to be this way. Talk to the banks. Flip the script. Tell them that Dirty Lil' Angels is a bad investment. And in doing so, prevent them from investing in the company."
I stand there frozen, the phone still held to my ear. I think about Natalie and Sloane, and everything that's at stake.
"Hello?" Linda asks. "Drake? Are you listening to me?"
Words are caught in my throat. Her ultimatum has left me speechless.
Do I give in and 'flip the script'?
Do I step into the viper's pit?
Sloane
So this is what it all comes down to.
This is what I do. You're going to see me in action today. We’re going to make Dirty Lil’ Angels a giant fucking company.
All the paperwork is over. All the hoops jumped through.
I'm standing next to my Treasury Operations team. They sit next to the trading floor that takes up the majority of the Hard Times main floor. The Treasury folks control the money. They're in Finance, and without them we wouldn't know what kind of positions we're in during our trading day.
Let me put it to you another way.
Let's say that I have one hundred million dollars. And I invest it in a company that starts paying me back 10 million a month for twenty months. That means that at the end, I'll be getting back two hundred million dollars. But that's only over the course of twenty months.
So each month I get back ten million dollars.
So what am I doing with that cash? I'm gonna have to re-invest it. But I'm also going to have to pay regulatory fees and taxes. And I'm going to have to make sure that I have enough coming back to tide me over till the next ten million comes in from the first investment.
Now instead of just one investment, imagine this is for several hundred.
Right.
Blows your mind away, doesn't it? And that's why we have a Treasury ops department.
See, people like Drake, they're all flash and little substance. They make the big sales, close the big deals, and then they think the hard part is over. But the back office bean counters—the accountants—they're the ones who keep the fucking firm running.