Page 34 of Ten Day Affair
My phone vibrates, and Angela's name fills the screen.
"Houston."
“Good morning, Mr. Houston. FedEx just dropped the packet at your Palm Beach house. Wanted to let you knowit arrived. The board summary is on top, like you requested.”
"I'll go grab it now. Thanks for the heads up.”
I end the call and head out, the sun already sharp overhead.
The drive back is quick. The gated property sits just off Ocean Boulevard, quiet, private.
One of the guest rooms on the ocean-facing side is now a temporary office. High-speed internet, dual monitors, and secured access to our company servers. I can work from here as long as I need to.
Twelve days will be a nice change of scenery.
I open the Express box and drop the board packet on the desk. Jacket off, collar unbuttoned, I sink into the leather chair and start flipping pages.
Financials. Projections. Redlines from legal. It's all laid out in crisp, methodical order, just how I like it.
I start flipping through the color-coded and tabbed pages, scanning the statements.
My phone dances on the pile of papers.
I look over and see it's Dorian, so I answer.
“Talk.”
“You got the prospectus?”
“Going through it now.”
“They added a contingency page for the Evelyn Taylor Wing. I know you instructed them to keep that out of the calculations, but it's a big money-suck.”
I turn another page. There it is—Section F, marked in red.
“They’re flagging it for partial closure?”
“Consolidation first. Full rezoning if we can push it through. Without it, our return drops by eighteen percent.”
“Eighteen’s manageable,” I say, eyes still on the page.
“Not if you promised a two-to-three-point return.”
I lean back in the chair, tapping a finger once against the desktop.
Sam’s voice flickers through my head. The wing is her legacy. That sharp certainty in her tone was unshakable.
But this was never about legacy. I didn’t buy the hospital’s debt to preserve history. I bought it because the math worked. And if the numbers say something needs to go, then it goes.
“Cole?” Dorian prompts.
“I’m listening, just running through the scenarios in my head.”
“If we cut the wing, we hit our return. If we leave it intact, we’ll need concessions somewhere else.”
I close the folder, the sound crisp in the quiet room.
“I’ll run through everything again, now that I have it all laid out,” I say.
