Chapter 1
Alice
“A distributor?” I gasped, almost too shocked to make my tongue even work. “What are you talking about, saying we need to sign with a distributor?”
The man who had spoken—Allan Banner—stared at me like I was the stupid one here. Like I was the one too dumb to get what he was talking about. When I was the owner of the company. I was the CEO. I was the brains behind the entire operation. And I was my own goddamn distributor.
“Alice, be reasonable,” he said, in a tone that I was sure was supposed to sound reasonable, but actually sounded completely, offensively condescending. “The fact is, you’re good at software. You’re good at apps, search engines, and even some hardware. But you’re no marketing guru, and the company is getting too big to do its own distribution. It’s a waste of time and effort, and it’s not doing anyone any good. You could put the manpower toward other things, let someone else do the—”
I slammed my palm down on the round table in the boardroom of my office building and leaned forward, knowing that my eyes were on fire and my face was as menacing as it could possibly get. I’d run this company for years. And before that, I’d done everything I had to do to get it started. Get it off the ground and flying toward the heights it had achieved.
I knew how to use my eyes to their best effect. And I knew how to intimidate people. Even self-centered, arrogant men like Allan Banner. Who also happened to be a board member.
Not that it mattered.
“Allan,” I said quietly. “This company has gotten as big as it has because of me. It’s been this successful because of me and my direction. It’s been successful because I do hire the best marketing people, and I do take the time to learn everything I need to know about distribution. I am this company and this company is me. Hell, the current round of publicity is because of the TailMe app—which, I’ll remind you, was my creation, my brainchild, distributed by my in-house distribution apparatus. And it’s taking the world by storm. Number one in all categories and making us millions of dollars. So, tell me again, Allan, how you think I need to take a step back and let someone else run the show? Go ahead. Tell me. I’ll wait.”
I snapped my mouth shut, my teeth clenched together, and stared him down. Waiting.
And Allan kept his mouth shut, too—just like the spineless prick he’d been ever since I’d met him. Yes, he’d done me and IMMAR, my startup, some very big favors early on, when I hadn’t had the capital to build the business up and needed some angel investors to swoop in and save me. I’d asked a friend what I should do about that and had been given Allan’s number, and when I’d contacted him with a pitch, he’d jumped right on board. He’d gathered a group of investors and then given me the seed money.
Which I was thankful for, even though it had led me right to this moment, when those same investors were trying to tell me how to run the joint. Despite the fact that I’d been running it flawlessly for years.
“Well?” I asked, my voice dangerously quiet, my eyes flitting from one investor to the next.
They were the ones who had called this board meeting. Had they really only come armed with one speech about wanting to hire out to some outside distribution firm? This entire meeting was about that one point? Or was there something else—something they hadn’t been brave enough to say?
“Is that it?” I finally asked, when no one else bothered to say anything. “You all called this meeting just to talk about distribution?”
I cracked a smile at that, unable to stop myself. Because it was just like these particular people—the ones with all the money, the ones who almost always worked from home and specialized in taking the right gambles on new companies rather than any real work—to cause all the hubbub of a board meeting when they could have handled the thing with a single email.
Julia, one of the other investors, started shuffling her papers uncomfortably in the silence, and my eyes went to hers.
“Julia?” I asked. “Did you have something to add?”
She was the most reasonable of them all, honestly. A successful businesswoman in her own right, she’d come into the investing game after she’d already had a lucrative career, and as such, was the only person on the board who really understood what it was like to be me. What it was like to be a woman in charge—and a woman fighting to keep herself on top, despite what the world around her thought she should be doing.
She gave me a slightly abashed smile the moment her eyes came up to meet mine, and I knew in that instant that she didn’t want to be here any more than I did. She’d thought it was a stupid idea right from the start, and if I knew Julia, she’d already known exactly how I was going to react.
Giving up a whole division of my company, just so someone else could make money I could keep in the company coffers. Please. It would have been a stupid business decision that would have not only cut our profits, but also reduced the size of the company itself—which wouldn’t have looked good on any of our financial reports the next time we wanted to take out a loan or discuss going public.
All because one stupid man had talked a bunch of other stupid men into believing that I couldn’t handle my business. Or, I realized suddenly, one stupid man had thought he could help out another of his businesses by forcing my business to hire out to them.
I bit my lip. Was that it? Did Allan have some side interest in a distribution firm? Was that where this screwy idea came from?
“I think you’ve said exactly what you needed to,” Julia said quietly, bringing my attention back into the room. She shifted her gaze to Allan—the instigator of the entire thing, I was sure—and cocked a single eyebrow at him. “Allan, I believe you’ve got your answer. Shall we all head out for lunch, and leave Alice here to continue with what I’m certain is a very important day?”
“I just think we should have more say in the direction of the company,” Allan protested in a last-ditch effort to be heard.
“You want more direction?” I asked pleasantly. “Tell me, Allan, how much did you make from your share of this company last year?”
I waited, wondering if he was going to tell the truth. Because I knew exactly how much he’d made. And if he was smart, he wouldn’t try to short it. I would call him out on it just to make him look stupid, and he had to know I would.
“Around five million,” he muttered.
I nodded slowly, tapping a finger to my lips in thought. “Imagine that. Over five million dollars, all for sitting around and not doing anything. All for having played hero when I was younger and needed an investor. That’s not a bad payday, I guess.”
There were some murmurs of agreement at that, and I nodded at everyone else.
“And just think, Allan, that you made that five mil because of decisions I made. Because of products that I thought up and then developed and distributed myself. Now honestly, have I ever given you a reason to doubt my business sense?”
He took forever to give me an answer—because he knew I was right.
“No,” he finally said.
“And don’t you have better things to do than to be hanging over my shoulder all the time, trying to second-guess me?”