CHAPTER 9: THE VAULTER QUESTION — Part 1
Week three post-stroke arrived with unseasonable cold.
I stood at my apartment window at six AM, coffee in hand, watching Manhattan wake up under gray skies. My breath fogged the glass. The heating in this place was expensive and insufficient—Roman's apartment, inherited along with his body, his life, his everything.
My phone had been quiet for three days.
Three days since I'd questioned the Vaulter numbers in front of the board. Three days since Kendall had looked at me like I'd betrayed him. Three days since I'd become the person who asked uncomfortable questions.
Logan hadn't called. That silence was deliberate, calculated. Keeping me uncertain about whether I'd played it right or wrong.
Gerri had texted once: Due diligence report comes back Tuesday. Board meeting Wednesday. Be ready.
Today was Wednesday.
I drained my coffee. Set the cup in the sink. Put on the armor: expensive suit, Patek Philippe watch, Roman Roy's public face.
Time to find out if I'd built a foundation or burned a bridge.
The executive conference room at nine AM. Same room as last time, same faces. But the energy was different. Tense. Waiting.
Kendall sat at the head of the table, expression carefully neutral. He'd prepared for this. Rehearsed responses to every possible objection. I could see it in the set of his shoulders, the way his hands rested too precisely on the table.
Frank sat to his right. Karl to his left. Gerri three seats down, laptop open, legal pad ready.
I took a seat in the middle this time. Not the back. Not hiding.
Various executives and board members filled the other chairs. Sandy and Stewy's representative—a sharp woman named Michelle—sat near the end. Observing. Waiting to see if there was blood in the water.
Kendall stood. "Thank you all for coming. I know there were questions about the Vaulter acquisition after our last meeting." He pressed a button on his laptop. A new presentation appeared on the screen. "We brought in Deloitte to conduct independent due diligence on Vaulter's subscriber numbers and revenue projections."
Professional. Controlled. But I caught the edge underneath. The barely suppressed anger at having to do this at all.
From across the table, I felt the Empathy Engine pulse. Kendall's surface thoughts were loud enough to bleed through without touch:
Prove them wrong. Prove Roman wrong. Show them I was right.
Deloitte's analyst—a tired-looking man in his forties named David—took over the presentation. He had the particular exhaustion of someone who'd spent three weeks examining spreadsheets and had found things he didn't want to report.
"Vaulter's reported subscriber growth showed consistent month-over-month increases of eight to twelve percent," David began. His voice had that careful flatness of someone delivering bad news to powerful people. "Our independent verification found..." He clicked to the next slide. "Actual growth averaged four to six percent, with significant variance month to month."
Silence.
The slide showed two lines. Vaulter's reported numbers—smooth, ascending, beautiful. And the verified numbers—choppy, inconsistent, significantly lower.
"They're cooking the books?" Karl asked.
"Not illegally," David said quickly. "They're using generous counting methodologies. Free trial accounts counted as subscribers. Cancelled accounts remain in the numbers for sixty days. Multiple accounts from the same user counted separately." He clicked again. "When you apply standard industry methodology..."
The gap between the lines widened.
Kendall's face was stone.
Frank leaned back in his chair, arms crossed.
Gerri made a note on her legal pad, expression unchanged.
I sat very still and let the room process what they were seeing.
"Revenue projections were based on the higher subscriber counts," David continued. "Corrected projections show..." Another slide. Lower numbers. Much lower. "Approximately forty percent less revenue than originally presented."
Someone at the end of the table whispered, "Jesus."
I didn't look at Kendall. Didn't need to. I could feel his humiliation radiating across the room, picked up by the Empathy Engine like a distress signal.
This can't be happening. I vetted this. I was sure. Roman was—he was right. Fuck. Fuck.
David finished his presentation. Sat down. The room remained silent.
Finally, Frank spoke. "So the acquisition as currently structured is overvalued by approximately..." He did the math in his head. "Two billion dollars?"
"Give or take," David confirmed.
More silence.
Kendall found his voice. "We can renegotiate. Go back to Vaulter with the corrected numbers. Get a better price."
"Can we?" Michelle from Sandy and Stewy's camp leaned forward. "Or do we walk away entirely? If they've been this creative with their subscriber counts, what else are they hiding?"
"We could restructure—" Kendall started.
"Or," Frank interrupted gently, "we could acknowledge this was based on flawed data and move on."
The room shifted. I could feel it. The careful repositioning, everyone adjusting their stance based on new information.
From Kendall's direction: They're going to kill it. They're going to kill my deal. My first major acquisition and they're going to—
I reached for my water glass. Took a drink. Buying time. Watching.
The Vaulter materials sat in front of me—printed presentation, due diligence report, financial projections. I let my focus soften, the way I'd been practicing. Trying to activate Value Sight consciously rather than waiting for random gut feelings.
What was Vaulter actually worth?
Not three billion. Not even with the corrected numbers. The company had potential—digital media was growing, millennial audience had value. But they'd grown too fast on venture capital, burned through cash, built a content engine that required constant feeding.
A feeling settled in my gut. Not quite nausea, not quite certainty. Just a deep sense of: this is wrong.
Not because the numbers were inflated—that was already proven. But because even at a corrected price, this was a bad fit. Waystar Royco was old media trying to buy new media without understanding it. Different cultures, different economics, different everything.
This would fail.
Maybe not immediately. But within a year, eighteen months. Failed acquisition, write-down, another mark against Kendall's record.
I could stay quiet. Let it happen. Let Kendall make his mistake.
Or I could speak up. Again.
I set the water glass down.
"The price isn't the only problem," I heard myself say.
Everyone turned to look at me.
Kendall's eyes had something dangerous in them. Warning. Don't you fucking dare.
I met his gaze. Held it.
"Even if we renegotiate to a fair price based on accurate numbers," I continued, "we're still buying a company that doesn't fit our business model. Different revenue structure, different content strategy, different audience expectations." I gestured to the materials. "Vaulter runs on venture capital logic. Grow fast, worry about profit later. We're a public company. Our shareholders expect profit now."
Frank was nodding slowly.
"Integration would be a nightmare," I continued. "Their entire company culture is startup chaos. Our culture is..." I paused. "Traditional media hierarchy. They'd resist every attempt to bring them into our systems."
Karl jumped in. "Management retention would be difficult. Their key talent would leave rather than work for a legacy media company."
The room was shifting again. From "renegotiate the price" to "maybe this isn't worth doing at all."
Kendall stood. Hands flat on the table. Voice tightly controlled.
"So what, we just give up? We just let digital media pass us by because it's hard to integrate?"
"No," I said quietly. "We build our own. Or we find a target that's actually compatible. But we don't buy a company just to prove we can make acquisitions."
You fucking traitor. You goddamn—
Kendall's thought cut off as he visibly controlled himself.
"This isn't about proving anything," he said. Voice ice. "This is about strategic positioning. This is about—"
"This is about making good business decisions," Frank interrupted. His voice was gentle but firm. "And the due diligence shows this isn't one."
The vote, when it came, wasn't even close.
Acquisition tabled indefinitely. Further research into digital strategy recommended. Committee formed to explore alternatives.
Kendall's first major acquisition: dead.
And I'd killed it.
The meeting adjourned. People filed out quickly, conversations already shifting to other topics. Corporate attention span, moving to the next crisis.
I stayed seated, gathering my materials slowly. Knowing what was coming.
Kendall appeared beside me. Leaned down close. Voice low and furious.
"What the fuck was that?"
I looked up at him. My brother. The man who would kill someone at a wedding, get trapped by Logan, betray Logan publicly, fight for years and lose everything.
The man I was supposed to be helping.
"That was me stopping you from making a three-billion-dollar mistake," I said quietly.
"That was you sabotaging me. Again." His hands clenched on the table edge. "You stood up in front of the board—twice—and made me look incompetent."
"The numbers were wrong. The strategy was wrong. I didn't make you look incompetent—I kept you from becoming incompetent by preventing a massive fuckup."
"You're supposed to be on my side!"
"I am on your side. That's why I spoke up."
He laughed. Bitter, sharp. "Bullshit. You saw an opportunity to make yourself look smart and you took it. You don't give a fuck about me."
I stood. Matched his height. Kept my voice level.
"If I didn't give a fuck about you, I would've stayed quiet. Let you buy Vaulter, let it fail in twelve months, let Logan use it as proof you're not ready. Instead, I asked hard questions that saved you from yourself."
"I didn't ask you to save me."
"No. You asked me to support you." I picked up my folder. "This is what support looks like when you're about to make a mistake. It's not pretty. But it's better than watching you fail."
We stared at each other. Years of sibling rivalry, real Roman's trauma, my knowledge of everything that would come, all compressed into this moment.
"Fuck you, Roman," Kendall said finally.
He walked away.
I stood there, watching him go. My phone buzzed.
Logan's private number.
Finally.
I answered. "Yeah?"
"My office. Now."
The line went dead.
I looked at my reflection in the darkened conference room screen. Roman Roy's face. My face. Whatever I was now.
Time to find out if Logan saw me as useful or as a threat.
I headed for the elevator.
The game continued. And I'd just made a move that would either prove I was valuable or prove I was dangerous.
Either way, there was no going back.
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