Chapter 13 - Seventy-Two Hours
We needed $310 million.
In three days.
I called every bank that had ever worked with my family.
Half refused.
The others demanded terms that would strip Solmere apart.
Then I remembered something my mother taught me.
“An empire is not the buildings.”
She used to point toward the staff moving through the lobby.
“It’s the people who make strangers feel they belong.”
I met with property managers.
Union representatives.
Minority investors.
Longtime partners.
We opened the books.
All of them.
For the first time in Solmere history, employees saw exactly how much executives had taken.
Anger became loyalty.
Two institutional investors agreed to bridge financing.
A pension fund offered another eighty million.
We were still forty-seven million short.
Then Julian called.
“I can get you the rest.”
I should have hung up.
May you like
Instead, I listened.
That mistake almost cost me everything.
