“No,” said Lucius cautiously. “Wrexall retains eighty-five percent ownership in the McKinley partnership. That was part of the deal.”
Jackson’s eyes narrowed. “What deal?”
“She left us with no choice,” said Bob Massey. “It’s an MBO.”
“A management buyout? Of what?”
“Of the entire retail division.”
Jackson laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous! That’s the core of our business. It has been for almost a century.”
“They raised twenty percent of the money themselves,” said Bob. “McKinley fronted the rest. Evidently Sasha’s become very tight with Joe Foman, their CEO. Very tight indeed.”
Jackson paused, trying to process this information. He knew Joe Foman socially, though not well. An aging letch, once extremely handsome but now a paunchy caricature of his young self, complete with slicked-back, receding hair and open-necked, wing-collar shirts, the idea of Joe Foman and Sasha being “tight” made Jackson physically sick. Forcing it out of his mind, he turned back to business.
“It doesn’t matter. So Sasha found the money and enough willing bodies to go with her. So what? She can’t effect a buyout without unanimous board consent.” The shoe shuffling and awkward glances intensified.
“It’s like Bob said,” muttered Lucius Monroe weakly. “We had no choice. If we didn’t agree to the deal, McKinley would have nixed the joint venture altogether. This way we get eighty-five percent of the biggest transaction in our history. As opposed to zero percent of nothing.”
“And for what?” added Bob Massey. “We’d still have lost the heart of our retail division. Sasha had a backup offer from Jones Lang LaSalle, and another from CB Richard Ellis Group, to take the team in whole or in part. They were out the door, Jackson.”
Jackson couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “So? So what if they were out the door? That’s human capital. It’s renewable! We could have rehired, we could have recruited. Instead you traded the living, beating heart of this company for a stake—a stake—in one deal! You must be out of your minds, all of you. Where’s your backbone? Where are your fucking balls?” He waved an accusing arm around the room. “Well it’s not going to happen. You know the statutes better than anyone.” He turned to look at Bob Massey, who blushed. “I think you’ll find they’re very clear on this point. The board decision on any MBO must be unanimous and it must include the family vote. Well, the family vote is me. And I vote no. Now where the hell is Lottie Grainger? I need to make a statement to those locusts outside, come to feast on Wrexall’s remains.”
“It’s too late for that, Jackson,” Dan Peters said stiffly. Dan had expected Jackson to take the news badly. They all had. But he for one was getting tired of being lectured by a long-haired upstart who couldn’t keep it in his pants. If Jackson felt so damn strongly about the company’s well-being, he shouldn’t have spent the last three days screwing his way around a ski resort like a dog in heat. “No phone reception” my ass. Sasha Miller had put them in a unique position, both dangerous and potentially profitable. Yes, there were risks involved, on all sides. That was business. But the board had acted in Wrexall Dupree’s best interests, and that was all there was to it.
“The deal was already signed, an hour ago. The board’s decision was unanimous. And we did secure the family vote.”
“That’s impossible!”
“Not at all. In the light of your absence and inability to be contacted, we put the vote to the next most senior family member with significant shareholdings, as we are legally entitled to do. Sasha Miller met with that senior family member this morning, explaining in full the relative advantages to Wrexall Dupree of this deal. After that meeting, he added his signature to our eleven. The deal is done. We believe it is a good deal. You may disagree, but the decision is nonetheless irrevocable.”
“Who added his signature?” Jackson’s voice was barely a whisper. “Who did Sasha go and visit, and dupe, and convince to sign in my name?”
With a small smile of satisfaction, Dan Peters said, “It was Walker Dupree, Jackson. Your father.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SASHA LAY BACK on her bed, elated but exhausted. The last five days had been a whirlwind. She still had to pinch herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. Have I really just bought out Wrexall’s retail business? Am I really going to be running it as my own company?
She’d been fielding the same questions from the media all afternoon. Her phone hadn’t stopped ringing: CNN, MSNBC’s Squawk Box, Forbes magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and photographers were camped outside her luxurious Upper East Side apartment building. (She had finally allowed herself to move out of her poky Brooklyn flat when Georgia, her old friend from her St. Michael’s days, had flown out to stay and complained that the place was little better than a student squat.) The press all wanted to know just how such a young, not to mention female, Wrexall executive had managed to convince the board to sell out of one of their most profitable businesses. And of course, Sasha answered all their questions with the same measured, poised responses: She hadn’t “outmaneuvered” anyone. This was a great deal for Wrexall Dupree, as well as for McKinley and the new group, tentatively christened Ceres (after the small but fertile breakaway planet between Mars and Jupiter, a nod to Sasha’s physics past). All sides felt that the time was ripe for a change, etc., etc.
In reality, Sasha had been overtaken by events almost as much as everybody else. Sure, she’d fantasized about one day running her own firm. But that was all it was, a fantasy. It was only as the McKinley deal drew to a close and Joe Foman, desperate to prolong his daily contact with Sasha, had started floating the idea of backing her, that she began to see the possibilities. Initially, Joe was suggesting that his private equity firm, Cosmos, fund a brand-new start-up company with Sasha at the helm. As appealing as the idea was to Sasha’s ego, it was far too high risk. Most start-ups sank without trace, however well managed they were; it was the law of the jungle. No, the ideal was a buyout, taking an established business with clients and a revenue stream and breaking it off from its parent. The problem was, of course, that parent companies tended not to want to let go of their most profitable divisions. They needed to be persuaded. And that’s when the idea came to her: What if she were to link the entire seven-hundred-million-dollar McKinley deal with an MBO proposal?
Joe Foman loved the idea and had no trouble selling it to the McKinley board. It was the Wrexall board that was always going to be tricky. Or so Sasha thought.
“How’d it go?” Joe Foman called her the second her meeting was over.
“Believe it or not, it went well,” laughed Sasha. “I thought they’d throw me out of there on my ass, but by the time I finished the pitch they actually seemed kind of excited.”
“What did I tell you?” said Joe. “Sure, they’ve got their pride. But eighty-five percent of seven hundred million dollars buys you a lot of pride. So will they sign?”
Sasha sighed. “No. We’re short one vote. Jackson Dupree. He’s out of town on business.”
“When’s he back?”
“Tomorrow. But it doesn’t matter. He’ll never go for it.”
She’d hung up the phone from Joe Foman feeling deflated. She’d come so close, so close she could smell it. But of course Jackson would have to be the wrench in the works. It wasn’t until much later that night, in bed, that it came to her. Using her security card to get back into her office, Sasha sat at her desk, poring over the company statutes into the small hours. At six a.m. she was on a plane to Martha’s Vineyard.
The Duprees, Mitzi and Walker, had homes all around the United States, but they spent most of their time on their ten-acre compound on the vineyard. In the last five years, since Walker’s health had declined, they had rarely left the island, preferring their own company and that of old friends to socializing in Manhattan or Palm Beach. Walker had a round-the-clock nursing staff living in at the house, a classic, white clapboard Cape home with dark-gree
n shutters, to-die-for ocean views, and the most exquisite gardens Sasha had ever laid eyes on.
“It’s so kind of you to come all this way to see us. You’re a friend of Jackson’s, you say?” Mitzi, an elegant woman in her early seventies with swept-up gray hair and Katharine Hepburn cheekbones, poured Sasha a glass of hot homemade apple cider.
“Um, sort of, yes,” said Sasha guiltily. “We work together.” She felt bad lying to this kind old woman. It didn’t help that every inch of polished mahogany furniture seemed to be covered with silver-framed photographs of Jackson, reproaching her from all angles. There was Jackson as a baby, looking surprisingly fat in an old-fashioned Oxford pram; Jackson, gap-toothed and grinning on his first day at kindergarten; Jackson on horseback, endlessly, holding polo sticks or trophies or both; Jackson graduating college, looking more like his dissolute, arrogant self with his long hair tied back in a ponytail and a taunting, admit it, you want me look in his dancing brown eyes.
“He’s a good boy,” said Mitzi dotingly, noticing Sasha staring at the pictures. “And so good at business, just like his father.”
Sasha glanced at Walker Dupree, the man who had once run Wrexall with an iron fist and whose name was still spoken of in the halls with a combination of reverence and fear. She knew of the rift that existed between father and son. Jackson never spoke of it, but it was common knowledge. Even so, disapproving of your child’s lifestyle did not necessarily mean you stopped loving them. Sasha wondered what the old man’s true feelings toward Jackson were. The mother clearly still doted on him. Sitting in an old-fashioned bath chair with a plaid blanket over his knees, Walker Dupree seemed barely aware she was there, gazing out the window at the gray, misty ocean, pausing occasionally to smile at his wife.
“Walker and I are alone here most of the time now, but that suits us just fine,” said Mitzi, patting her husband’s knee affectionately. “Of course we’d like to see more of Jackson than we do. But he’s so busy with work, it’s not easy for him.”
Sasha thought of how easy it had been for her to hop on a plane from JFK this morning and wondered how such sweet, kind, normal people had produced such a selfish, egotistical son.
“But listen to me, prattling on like an old woman. You said you needed to talk to Walker about something?”
“Yes. It’s nothing to worry about. We’re trying to push through a deal, something that should make a lot of money for the company.”
“That sounds exciting, doesn’t it Walker?”
The old man’s face remained impassive.
“It is exciting. But because of the size and nature of this deal, we need unanimous board approval, and the deadline is at one o’clock today. Unfortunately Jackson’s away traveling and can’t be reached.
“Oh dear.” Mitzi wrung her hands. “I do hope he’s not pushing himself too hard.”
I expect he’s been pushing himself very hard indeed, thought Sasha. Right between some socialite’s thighs. Aloud, she said, “We need another shareholding family member to vote in his place. I have all the paperwork with me, if you want to see it. But all we really need is Mr. Dupree’s signature, right here on the last page.”
Walker Dupree cleared his throat. Sasha jumped, as if a waxwork dummy had suddenly come to life. “Mitzi, honey,” he said in his soft, gravelly voice, “let me talk to the young lady alone, would you?”
Mitzi looked as surprised as Sasha. “Sure. Of course, darling, if that’s what you want. Would you like Mary Anna or one of the other nurses?”
“No, thank you. I’ll be fine. We won’t be long.”
Once Mitzi was gone and the living-room door was closed, Walker Dupree looked Sasha in the eye for a long, long time. When eventually he spoke, he was not only lucid, but sharp as a tack and very, very mad.
“Now you listen to me. The next time you set foot in my house and try to get me, or any member of my family, to sign some bullshit piece of paper we haven’t even read, I will set my dogs on you. Is that clear?”
Sasha blushed to the roots of her hair. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, Mr. Dupree. I thought…”
“You thought I was mentally incapacitated. Yes, I know. That’s what makes it such a shitty thing to do. However, as you can see, I’m not.”
A frosty silence fell. Sasha didn’t know whether to get up and leave, or apologize again. After what felt like years but was probably less than a minute, Walker Dupree said, “Show me the documents. All of them.”
Sasha did as she was asked. She sat and watched for twenty minutes as the old man read and reread the deal memo, his rheumy eyes scanning the figures and graphs, carefully extracting every ounce of meaning. At last he looked up.
“Explain to me in no more than three sentences why I should sign my name to this deal.”
Sasha took a deep breath. “I can explain it to you in one sentence, Mr. Dupree. Because it’s the best deal you’re going to get.”
For the first time since his wife had left them, Walker Dupree smiled.
“And if I don’t sign?”
“Wrexall will lose the McKinley deal. And I’ll leave the firm and take the retail group with me.”
“Take them where?”
“Jones Lang LaSalle, probably.”
“What makes you so sure they would go? Wrexall could counteroffer. Double their salaries if necessary. We could cut you out of the picture.”
Now it was Sasha’s turn to smile. “You could try, sir. But you won’t succeed. You see, unlike every other business at Wrexall, we are a team and we watch each other’s backs. It’s not a concept your son believes in, but it’s worked for me.”
Walker Dupree frowned, and Sasha inwardly cursed her big mouth. What did I have to go and bring up Jackson for? He’s the man’s son, for God’s sake. Of course he’s going to take his side over an outsider’s, rift or no rift. But Walker Dupree surprised her.
“You say you’ve been unable to reach Jackson. Where is he?”
“He’s on business in Park City,” said Sasha, straight-faced.
“You mean he’s off somewhere partying his ass off?” Walker translated succinctly.
Sasha shrugged. “Truthfully, sir, your guess is as good as mine.”
“I see,” said Walker. “And you obviously believe my son would refuse to sign this deal if he were where he should be, at his desk? Otherwise you’d simply have moved the deadline and not bothered coming all this way to try and hoodwink me into doing it.”
Sasha was about to protest but wisely thought better of it. “I believe Jackson would refuse to sign anything that he felt I might profit from. However great a deal it might be for your company. Sir.”
“Ah.” Walker Dupree nodded in understanding. “So it’s personal.”
Sasha’s heart sank. That’s it. I’ve blown it. He’s not going to sign, not if it means backing me over his own heir. At that moment Mitzi walked back in, carrying a tray of freshly baked cinnamon cookies. “Anyone hungry? Business talk always makes Walker hungry.” She winked at Sasha. The smell of the biscuits took Sasha right back home to her parents’ cottage in Frant. The combination of the nostalgia punch to the stomach and her disappointment about the deal was too much for her. To her great embarrassment, Sasha found her eyes welling up with tears.
“Oh, my dear, are you all right? Whatever is the matter?” said Mitzi.
“Nothing,” said Sasha unconvincingly. “It’s er, it’s my allergies. Thank you for the cookies, but I think we’re done here.” She stood up to leave. As she headed for the door, Walker Dupree called after her. “Haven’t you forgotten something?”
He handed her the documents. There, on the last page, gleaming in fresh, bright-blue ink, was his signature.
“I don’t believe in letting personal feelings get in the way of business. And the best deal you’re going to get is always the right deal.”
“Thank you…” stammered Sasha.
“If Jackson wanted to use his vote, he should have answered his goddamned phone,” snapped
Walker. “Maybe this’ll wake him up a bit. It’ll certainly wake up those old fuddy-duddies at Wrexall. Companies need change, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It’s what keeps ’em ahead of the game. Good luck with your new venture, miss.”
Lying on her bed now, it was hard to believe that that conversation had taken place this morning. The rest of the day had been one of the longest of Sasha’s life, yet at the same time it had passed in a blur. As soon as the deal went through and was announced on Bloomberg, all hell broke loose in the markets with both Wrexall’s and McKinley’s shares fluctuating wildly before ending the day six and fourteen points up, respectively. Sasha herself had been so overwhelmed with requests for interviews, she’d had to ask Joe Foman to loan her a full-time PR person to handle it all. It had been so crazy and so sudden, she hadn’t even had time to call Lottie Grainger, the one person at Wrexall outside of her own group whom she was determined to poach over to Ceres. Reaching for her BlackBerry, ignoring the hundreds of unread messages and voice mails, she was about to call Lottie when she heard a loud banging at the door.
Instantly on her guard—no one should have been able to get up to her floor without security downstairs alerting her first—Sasha made sure the chain was on and the door double bolted before she looked through the spy hole.
It was Jackson.
“Open the door, Sasha. I know you’re in there.”
Sasha left the chain on, unbolting the door and opening it about an inch so they could talk.
“How the hell did you get up here?”
“I took the fire stairs. Now are you going to let me in or what?” He looked tired and bedraggled, with deep-purple shadows under his eyes and a sweat-stained shirt still crumpled from his flight. His face was flushed with anger and exertion. Sasha contemplated not letting him in. But she knew he was stubborn enough to hammer at her door all night, and besides, she would have to face him sometime. She unhooked the chain and stood back as he stormed inside, pacing her tiny entryway like a caged tiger.