“Tell me you have good news,” I said.
“I have shit news.”
“Okay, shoot.”
I slowed my pace, venturing into a quieter side street.
“I asked around a bit. A friend of a friend knows his lawyer, and...well, turns out Albert actually wants to sell his shares.”
“Fuck!” I leaned against the metal fence of a brownstone, running a hand through my hair. “He can’t sell without our agreement, though. It’s in the contract.”
None of us could sell our shares without all the partners agreeing. It was a way to ensure that we only ever sold to a party everyone considered a good fit.
“No, but you also can’t deny the sale forever.”
“Does he have a buyer yet?”
“Not that I know of, but that doesn’t mean much.”
I unhitched myself from the railing and began pacing around the pavement, almost stepping into a pile of dog shit.
“I’ll talk to Becca and David. The best way to move forward is if we buy his shares. Him selling to some randomly chosen party is not going to happen. It would be a dick move to all our mentees. They trusted the three of us with decision power, not a stranger.”
When I said mentees, I actually meant Tess. I cared about all our mentees, of course, but she was more important to me than any of the others.
“I’ll look at your finances, check the cash flow and the key performance indicators.”
He wasn’t just our lawyer but also our consulting CFO.
“Perfect.”
“Look, I can tell you right away that things might get messy.”
I snorted. Yeah, especially because of that fucker. “Can you put our options in a document and meet with us as soon as possible?”
“Sure. I’m on it.”
“Thanks, Barney.”
I headed to the brownstone afterward, trying to recall the wording in our contract regarding a sale. Honestly, I never paid too much attention to that part of it. When we originally drafted it, we’d all been friends, so it hadn’t mattered. No one thought we’d ever sell. And when we amended the contract so Albert became a silent partner, we made no changes to that part. We barely convinced him to sign the amendment as it was.
When I arrived at the brownstone, I immediately called Becca and David into my office. It was a cold mid-October day—too cold for the rooftop, and we hadn’t brought up the heaters yet. The two of them sat down. I was pacing the room.
“I spoke to Barney about Albert,” I said without easing them into it, then repeated the whole conversation. I always preferred to rip Band-Aids right off.
“That fucker. He’s getting a check without doing anything, and it’s not enough?” Becca was seething. Her short hair was sticking out in every direction. She looked a bit like a hedgehog. It was always a sign that she was pissed.
“Barney said he’ll inspect the contract and look at our cash flow,” I finished.
“Thank fuck, because I get a headache every time I try to read all that law lingo,” David exclaimed. He got up from the beanbag chair and grabbed the stress ball from my desk, flexing it in his hands.
“I propose we buy his shares,” I said.
Becca nodded in agreement. “That’s a good idea. As long as he isn’t a dick and actually wants to sell to us.”
Years ago, we proposed to buy him out, and he refused. Now he wanted out. This had to work.
“We really didn’t need this right now when we just signed on a new mentee,” David said. “I mean, getting into a legal dispute between ourselves is always a bad idea, but now, it’s especially shit.”