Ex-Husband, Inc

Chapter 2: Above the Laundromat

The office didn't look like much from the street.

A metal door next to a laundromat. No sign. A buzzer with a piece of tape over it that just said M. HOLDINGS in Marcus's own handwriting, faded from years of rain.

Marcus climbed the narrow stairs two at a time. Monday morning light came through a dusty window on the landing, and somewhere below him a dryer thumped, off balance, load after load.

He liked it here. Nobody who knew him as Gerald Sinclair's disappointing son-in-law would ever think to look for him above a laundromat. That was the whole point.

Teddy Osei was already at the long table when Marcus walked in, three laptops open, a coffee going cold at his elbow. Teddy was the only person who saw both sides of Marcus's life, and the only one who'd earned the right to say what he thought about it.

"You look like you slept in that truck," Teddy said, not looking up.

"Didn't sleep much."

"Rough dinner?"

"Gerald called my three years of construction work a birdhouse."

Teddy snorted. "Did you tell him you own the timber company that supplied half the lumber for his beach house?"

"Didn't come up."

"Course not." Teddy finally looked up, sliding one of the laptops across the table. "Well. Good morning, then. Dominic Vale's people made an offer on the Sinclair Group headquarters lease Friday afternoon. Cash, fast close, no contingencies. They're trying to lock it up before anyone else can move."

Marcus sat down and pulled the laptop closer. The numbers on the screen were the kind of numbers that made most people's hands shake. They didn't make his hands shake anymore. They used to, years ago, back when a deal this size still felt like something that could disappear if he blinked.

"Vale doesn't know Meridian already holds the underlying land," Marcus said.

"No," Teddy said. "He thinks he's buying a building. He doesn't know he'd be buying it from us, through six shell companies, at whatever price we decide to charge him."

"Let him find out the hard way."

"That's the plan." Teddy leaned back in his chair. "You want to walk me through why we're doing this the slow way, by the way? You could end this in one phone call. One press release. 'Surprise, Gerald, it's me.' Done. Why the long game?"

Marcus thought about it for a second before he answered. It wasn't the first time Teddy had asked.

"Because if I do it in one phone call, it's just a trick," Marcus said. "A stunt. He humiliates me, I humiliate him back, everybody moves on with a good story to tell at parties. I don't want a good story. I want them to understand, slowly, one thing at a time, exactly how wrong they were. About all of it."

"That's a lot of patience for a man who just got divorced eleven days ago."

"I've had three years of practice."

Teddy studied him for a moment, the way he did when he was deciding whether to push further. He decided not to.

"Fine," Teddy said. "Slow game it is. First move — we don't sell to Vale. We let his offer sit. He'll get nervous, sweeten it, maybe start digging into who actually owns the underlying land. When he finds Meridian's name buried in the paperwork, he's going to want a meeting."

"Let him ask for one."

"And when Gerald finds out Meridian is sniffing around his own headquarters lease?"

Marcus almost smiled. Almost.

"Let him find out too."

Teddy tapped a few keys, and a new document opened on the screen — a shell company org chart, the kind of thing that looked like nothing to anyone who didn't know how to read it. At the very bottom, buried under six layers of holding companies with names like river towns nobody had ever visited, was a single line: M. Kane — Controlling Member.

"You know," Teddy said, "one day soon, somebody smart enough is going to trace this all the way down."

"I'm counting on it," Marcus said. "Just not yet."

His phone buzzed on the table. He turned it over. A text from a number he didn't have saved, though he recognized it anyway — Sinclair Group's front office line.

We need to speak with the ownership group behind Meridian Holdings regarding the HQ lease. Please call at your earliest convenience.

Marcus read it twice. Then he set the phone face down on the table and picked his coffee back up, like it was nothing at all.

Teddy watched him do it. "That the call I think it is?"

"Sooner than I expected."

"You gonna answer it?"

Marcus looked at the org chart still glowing on the screen, at his own name buried six layers deep, waiting.

"Not yet," he said. "Let them wonder a little longer."

Outside, the dryer downstairs finished its cycle with a long, tired buzz, and somewhere across town, in a glass office on the top floor of a building he was about to own, Gerald Sinclair had no idea how close he already was to finding out exactly who he'd humiliated at dinner.