Chapter 113
Serena
The morning light streaming through Vance Heritage's grimy windows felt different today. Not hopeful, exactly—I wasn't naive enough for that—but purposeful. I had a plan. Step one: eliminate the bleeding before it killed us.
"Grayson." I caught him before he could disappear into the archives again. "Get me the full creditor list. Every single one. I want names, amounts, and account numbers."
He blinked at me over his reading glasses, the kind of look that said he'd seen too many CEOs come and go to get excited. "Planning to negotiate?"
"Planning to pay." I pulled up my bank account on my phone—the one that now held Harrison's six point two million and Eleanor's ten million, minus the two million I'd already wired to Wesley just to watch him choke on it.
Fourteen point two million total, though Eleanor's money came with strings I'd worry about later. "Wire transfers. Today. All of them."
The skepticism on his face shifted into something that might have been respect. "You're serious."
"Dead serious." I grabbed my coffee—terrible, burnt, but ours. "The vultures can't pick our bones if we're not a corpse yet."
---
By noon, my fingers ached from typing routing numbers and my head throbbed from dealing with smug creditors who couldn't hide their shock that the "little Vance girl" actually had cash. But one by one, the balances zeroed out. The high-interest loan sharks. The equipment suppliers who'd been threatening to repo our desks. The landlord who'd been three days from eviction proceedings.
Gone. All of it.
When I refreshed the company's liability spreadsheet for the final time, the number at the bottom made my chest tighten: $5,800,000.
Nearly six million. Down from twenty million. I'd just burned through fourteen point two million in one morning—Harrison's sale and most of Eleanor's loan—and we were still underwater.
It should have felt like victory. Instead, it felt like staring at the base of Everest after clearing the foothills. Because six million in debt was still six million we didn't have, and that didn't even account for operating costs. Payroll. Utilities. The gallery space I'd need to rent if we ever wanted to host another auction. Insurance. Marketing. God, marketing alone could eat a quarter million if we did it right.
I did the math three times, hoping I'd miscalculated. I hadn't.
To keep this company alive—not thriving, just breathing—I needed around eight million dollars. Maybe more.
"Fuck," I whispered to the empty office.
"Language, Ms. Vance."
I nearly jumped out of my skin. Grayson stood in the doorway, two mugs of fresh coffee in hand—the good kind, from the café down the street. He'd gone out. For me.
"Sorry." I took the mug he offered, letting the warmth seep into my palms. "Just... crunching numbers."
"And discovering that solvency and sustainability are two very different beasts?" He settled into the chair across from my desk—one of the few pieces of furniture that had survived the move to this shabby building, a plain oak thing that had probably been here since the seventies. "Your grandfather used to make that exact face when the quarterly reports came in."
The mention of Peter made my throat tight. "Did he ever figure out how to make the numbers less terrifying?"
"He figured out how to make people believe in them." Grayson's smile was small, sad. "Which, if I may say, you're already doing. Word's gotten around, you know. New CEO—Yale prodigy, no less—willing to pay her debts instead of running from them. That sale to Harrison? People are talking."
I stared at him. "Talking how?"
"Talking like maybe Vance Heritage isn't dead yet." He took a slow sip of coffee, watching me over the rim. "Talking like maybe you're not just Peter's granddaughter in name. Talking like maybe—just maybe—you've got his eye and his spine."
Something hot and unfamiliar bloomed in my chest. Pride, maybe. Or hope. Both felt dangerous.
"So what you're saying is..." I leaned forward, hardly daring to breathe. "I can go to the banks now?"
"You can try." Grayson held my gaze. "I won't sugarcoat it—a month ago, they'd have ended the call before you finished introducing yourself. The Vance name carried that much damage." He paused, something shifting in his expression. "But now? You've got Harrison's endorsement. Your grandfather's relationships still carry weight in the right circles."
His tone remained cautious. "It won't be easy, Ms. Vance. But it's no longer impossible."
---
And Grayson had been right about one thing—it wouldn't be easy.
The first bank said no. Politely. "We appreciate your initiative, Ms. Vance, but given the market volatility..."
The second bank said no. Cautiously. "Perhaps in six months, once you've established more consistent revenue streams..."
The third, fourth, and fifth banks said no with varying degrees of corporate-speak that all translated to the same thing: You're too young, too untested, too much of a risk.
By the tenth call, my jaw ached from smiling through rejection. By the twelfth, I'd stopped smiling entirely.
"Ms. Vance?" The voice on the other end of the thirteenth call belonged to someone named Robert Louis, Senior VP of Commercial Lending at Sterling Trust. "I've been following your recent moves with great interest."