The Last Network - Chapter 54
Struck Down
Rabbit looked out from his office onto the floor. Em had given notice this morning. He’d tried to turn her into a house cat, but that was never her. Honestly, he’d squandered her talent. Froze her out and handcuffed her abilities. There was so much she could have done, had it only been peacetime. Instead, they were at war and everything needed to be ugly. That meant the one person at Peared capable of true beauty was expendable. Now Sonny was Peared’s only real position of strength. Rabbit would have to tell Sonny about the IP lawsuit soon. That would not go well. The real question was how poorly would it go. Rabbit never took the time to line up potential successors. His choices boiled down to kissing Sonny’s ass or throwing darts at the tech org chart. Three guys could conceivably replace Sonny and he knew too little about them.
While Rabbit could walk the wire with the best, the wire was really starting to wobble.
His phone buzzed.
“Hey, Kendra.”
“Rabbit, you have a problem.”
He ran his hand over his face. “You heard about Em?”
“Huh?”
“She just quit, I thought maybe news reached you.”
“No, but this is worse.”
Rabbit jerked upright, bracing himself. “What?”
“I got sacked this morning.”
“How is that possible?”
“Terry Walker is cleaning house.”
“How is that possible?” He repeated himself. “I thought you said they’d give you at least a year.”
“They are selling the company. It gets worse for you, they need to drop Peared as a client before selling. Expect a six-month notification soon. You need to handle the Sams before they get called back to the mothership, then you need to find Paolo a new home ASAP.”
Rabbit kicked himself. How could he have been so stupid? In all the scenarios he played out, he never thought he’d lose his back office at NAM. He felt like he was going to have a heart attack. Panic set in for the first time in a dozen years. He took a deep breath, sat on the floor, and stared at his shoes.
“Rabbit you there?”
“I’m sorry Kendra. When are you done?”
“I’m already out.
“Tell me you are shitting me. My whole fucking business is at stake here.”
“I’m not, that’s why I am calling you. You don’t know Terry Walker, but he doesn’t make moves like this without a clear view of the runway. NAM is as good as sold.”
“Has anyone done diligence on you?”
“No, but Terry has our audited financials and enough paper to get a sale to the goal line. He’s now the acting CEO. Diligence will only be a matter of time.”
“Thorn.”
His head began to spin. Sweat ran down his neck. He white knuckled the phone.
“Don’t make this about yourself, Rabbit.”
“I’m not but putting the screws to me is what you’d call a portfolio synergy.”
“Jesus Christ. I just got fired from the company I founded, and you are bringing this back around to you. We’ll talk another time when your head isn’t up your ass.”
His phone went dead. He dropped it and grabbed both arms of his chair. He counted backwards from ten and popped an Ativan he kept in case of emergency. The benzo cavalry was on its way. He looked at his watch and saw his BPMs at 160 and dropping. He wasn’t going to die; he just needed to pull himself together.
Rabbit leveled himself with his monitor and pulled up Thorn Capital’s portfolio page. They were in every sector of technology. They had to have a company that could pay a premium for NAM. It would come back in a quid pro quo. Automata. IPO’ed three years ago. Fifteen billion market cap. NAM wasn’t worth a billion. Easily absorbable.
Fucking Frank Meyers, that puppeteering fuck. Rabbit’s Mexican operation looked like chickenshit compared to the pincer that was closing around him. Rabbit realized what the deep end of the pool really looked like.
He was drowning again. His heart rate spiked. Breathe, fucker. Try not to think. Breathe.
If only Kendra had called him before he let Em walk. He’d have done anything to keep her. Now Rabbit would have to handle marketing himself while finding a new back office. The fuck was he going to do without that AI? The fuck was going on with his body?
At this point, Peared could back off some of their outlawed tactics, but they still needed FriendZone Rules for optimization and growth. Even if he found another company willing to play dirty, he’d run the same risk of losing them. This had to come in house. That was going to cost him serious money. He’d have to delay his loan repayments or worse, take on investment.
First, he needed to secure Paolo. He was the key to everything.
Fuck. Frank got him good. He was seeing stars.