William rushed back to his condo, his mind racing faster than the speedometer. He'd been planning to go to the Farmington estate instead, but halfway through the drive he'd realized he didn't have enough time. Plus, he really didn't want to sit beneath all those portraits of dead relatives who seemed to scrutinize his every move with their oil-painted disapproval. The ancestors had been judging him his whole life—he wasn't about to give them front-row seats to whatever disaster was about to unfold.
The building loomed over the Hartford skyline, all steel and tinted glass, like a modernist middle finger pointed at the traditional brick facades surrounding it. His duplex occupied the top two floors—a deliberate choice that kept him literally above the fray. Inside, it was minimalistic by design: an open space defined by clean lines and natural light, surfaces that held nothing unnecessary. No clutter, no sentiment, no baggage.
The vast window wall was the centerpiece, spanning nearly forty feet of uninterrupted glass. During the day, it framed the city like a living photograph. At night, it became a dark mirror reflecting the scattered lights below, turning the space into something that felt suspended between earth and sky.
He'd chosen this place because it felt honest—unadorned, functional, simple. Just like his garage workshop or the Zephyr factory floor. Maybe that was another reason he hadn't gone to Farmington.
He unlocked the door and stepped inside, immediately hit by the familiar scent of the place—faintly coffee-tinged air mixed with the lemony polish George insisted on using. The older man was already waiting by the kitchen island, ramrod straight in his perfectly pressed suit, holding an attaché case like it contained state secrets. Two manservants flanked him, each carrying a brown cardboard box so heavy the seams strained and bulged ominously.
"Young Master," George intoned, inclining his head with the formal precision that had never wavered in the fifteen years William had known him. "Everything is here as requested."
William exhaled slowly, trying to let the calm of the space settle over him like armor. The condo usually worked its magic immediately—all that clean space and organized simplicity had a way of clearing his head. Today, though, his thoughts kept churning.
"Thanks, George. You can leave them on the table." He nodded toward the massive black marble slab that doubled as a dining table and command center. The thing had cost more than most people's cars, but it was built to last centuries. "Also—please prep some snacks. And keep the coffee coming. Strong coffee. The Zephyr team will be here any minute, and they're going to need fuel. Make sure they're comfortable."
"Understood, sir."
George gave a barely perceptible signal. The manservants stepped forward with synchronized precision, setting the boxes down with dull thuds that seemed to echo in the quiet space. Each box hit the marble with the finality of a judge's gavel.
While they worked, William shrugged off his coat and tossed it over the back of a chair—a small rebellion against George's perpetual tidiness. He unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves, trying not to think too hard about the hours ahead. If he let himself start calculating probabilities, he'd probably conclude he was about to make the worst mistake of his life. Better to just dive in and hope he could swim.
He pulled out a chair and flipped open the first binder with the reluctance of someone opening Pandora's box. The thick cardstock cover read: Business Plans and Reports—Harrow Automobiles, 1955–1960. And a sperate file for 1961 and 62. The ink was starting to fade, and the pages smelled like old paper and dust, tinged with the faintest trace of the cedar-scented storage room they'd been exiled to. Someone had relegated these documents to the archive years ago, as if putting them out of sight could make the problems disappear.
He began to read and immediately wished he hadn't.
For nearly half an hour, there was only the quiet rhythm of pages turning and George's measured movements in the kitchen—the soft clink of china, the whisper of cloth on marble, the distant hum of the coffee machine working overtime. Each section of the reports carried its own indictment, a litany of failure dressed up in corporate euphemisms. Margin compression. Seasonal headwinds. Temporary loss in dealer confidence. All polite language for an open wound that no one had the stomach to treat properly.
He kept reading, chasing some elusive thread of clarity through the maze of bad decisions and worse luck. He wanted to understand the machine before he tried to rebuild it. Or, more likely, before he had to dismantle it piece by piece and sell it for scrap.
The numbers painted a picture he recognized but had hoped never to see: a company slowly bleeding to death while everyone pretended the patient was just resting. Sales declining quarter over quarter. Production costs rising faster than prices. A dealer network losing confidence like a house of cards in a stiff breeze.
Then came the knock at the door—three brisk raps that cut through the silence like a blade.
"Come in," he called, grateful for the interruption.
The Zephyr team swept inside with the practiced confidence of people who had been through more crises than celebrations, their energy immediately filling the space. They moved like a unit—not perfectly synchronized, but comfortable in each other's presence in a way that spoke of years working together.
"Bill, Lucas, Liz—welcome," William said, standing to greet them. "Thanks for rushing over. I know the timing is insane."
Liz was first through the door, dropping her worn leather duffel bag on the couch with the casual authority of someone who'd never met a space she couldn't make her own. She raked a hand through her coppery hair—longer now than when they'd started Zephyr, falling in waves past her shoulders—and gave William a look that was half exasperation, half amusement.
"Seriously, Will," she said, her voice echoing across the open space with its familiar mix of Boston accent and courtroom precision. "Who calls at five in the damn morning? I swear to God, if you expect me to function on no sleep and airplane coffee, I'm putting in for a salary hike. A big one."
Despite the ungodly hour and the overnight flight from San Francisco, she looked frustratingly immaculate. Bell-bottom jeans that probably cost more than most people's rent, a tie-dye shirt that managed to look both casual and expensive, gold hoop earrings that caught the light, and hair that looked like she'd just stepped out of some exclusive salon. Anyone seeing her on the street would have mistaken her for another Berkeley hippie. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Liz could quote federal case law like a priest reciting scripture and had personally negotiated half of Zephyr's most ruthless contracts. She was the head of their legal team and, in William's estimation, the sharpest mind he'd ever encountered—which was saying something, considering the company they kept.
They'd met at Harvard, back when the world seemed simpler and the future felt like something you could plan for. He'd been studying management with the grim determination of someone fulfilling family expectations, of course that was before he decided to give his family a big finger, and she'd been in law school, where she'd quickly and systematically dismantled half their professors' arguments in class. Some people said law was in her blood, and that might very well be true—the past few generations of her family had all been lawyers, each one more formidable than the last.
They'd become friends quickly, bonding over late-night study sessions and an obsessive fascination with cars. Most people assumed they were a couple, which William found amusing since he was about ninety percent sure Liz batted for the other side. He'd never asked—it didn't matter, and besides, Liz would tell him when she was ready. Or not. That was her choice.
Bill came next, hugging a battered canvas messenger bag to his chest as if it contained something precious—which it probably did. The man treated financial documents like sacred texts. He looked exactly as William remembered: checked shirt pressed to military precision, khaki pants with a crease sharp enough to cut paper, and glasses thick enough to qualify as bulletproof. His hair was thinning on top, but he wore it with the same matter-of-fact acceptance he brought to everything else.
Bill could read a ledger the way other people read novels, finding drama and intrigue in columns of numbers that would put most folks to sleep. He had an unsettling knack for finding the single number that didn't belong, the one figure that revealed the whole carefully constructed lie. To William's knowledge, Bill might be the only person on earth who would read an income statement for pleasure on a weekend.
Lucas was the last inside, his broad shoulders filling the doorframe as he ducked slightly—a habit from years of dealing with spaces designed for smaller humans. He towered over them all, his shirt sleeves rolled up to show forearms that belonged in a weightlifting competition. The man had been a high school football legend back in Ohio before deciding he liked working with people more than tackling them into the dirt.
His size intimidated most strangers at first glance, but anyone who spent five minutes with Lucas realized he was probably the gentlest man in any room. He had a way of making people feel heard, really heard, that was rarer than gold in the corporate world. It was why he'd become Zephyr's head of human resources despite having no formal training—he understood people in a way that couldn't be taught from textbooks. And hew had gone ahead and taken the position like fish in water. But if that wasn't enough he had been studying for an HR degree part time.
They each claimed seats around the table, dragging chairs closer and forming a tight semicircle that felt more like a war council than a business meeting. The marble surface reflected their faces back at them, slightly distorted, like they were looking into dark water.
Liz propped her boots on the marble with deliberate irreverence. "So," she said, settling back in her chair like she owned the place, "what's the story this time? Hostile takeover? Tax fraud? Corporate espionage? Don't keep me in suspense—I've had three hours on a plane to imagine the worst-case scenarios."
William ran a hand through his hair, buying time he didn't have. Even after all these years, even with these people who'd followed him through hell and back, the words stuck in his throat.
"My father had an accident yesterday," he said finally, trying to keep his voice steady and professional. "Car accident. He's in a coma at Harrow Hospital."
The room went quiet. Outside, the city hummed with its usual late-morning energy, but inside the condo, you could have heard a pin drop.
"Jesus, Will," Lucas said softly. "I'm sorry."
William nodded, accepting the sympathy but not wanting to dwell on it. "The thing is, the board met this morning. Apparently, they want me to step in as interim president. Surprising, considering how things ended between us."
He had call them senile parasites sucking dividends out of a company they're too gutless to lead and too arrogant to step away from and whose one foot in the grave and the other jammed up their own asses—smug, obsolete, and too busy sniffing their own farts to see they're driving the company straight into the dirt. That might not have been his best moment.
He paused, looking at each of them in turn. "I'm expecting a fight. Maybe several. The board, the unions, the dealers—hell, probably half the management team. Nobody's going to be happy about the prodigal son returning."
Bill adjusted his glasses, his expression carefully neutral in the way that meant his mind was already racing through possibilities. "And you want to... what, exactly?"
Liz leaned forward, her boots hitting the floor with a soft thud. "Let me guess. You want to understand what you're up against before you decide whether it's worth trying to save.
"Exactly." William gestured at the boxes of files. "I need to know how bad it really is. The board meeting gave me the highlights, but I need details. Numbers. Facts. Everything they didn't want to tell me."
Lucas rested his elbows on the table, his massive frame making the elegant chairs look like doll furniture. "Didn't you swear you'd never go back? I distinctly remember a conversation involving bourbon and some very colorful language about family businesses."
William almost smiled at the memory. "I did. Multiple times, actually. But..." He exhaled, glancing at the stacks of files that represented decades of decisions, mistakes, and missed opportunities.
"Things change. People change. Maybe I was wrong to walk away so completely."
Liz arched an eyebrow, her expression shifting into the sharp focus she brought to depositions. "So you're thinking about walking away from Zephyr? Just like that?"
"I don't know," he admitted, and the honesty felt strange on his tongue. "Zephyr is—was—my project. My clean break from all this." He gestured vaguely at the files. "But Harrow Automobiles... that was my childhood dream. Back before I understood how much rot there was underneath all the chrome and leather."
She studied him for a long moment, her lawyer's instincts probably cataloging every micro-expression. "You're serious about this."
"I am."
There was a quiet moment where no one spoke, the weight of the decision settling over them like dust. The condo felt suddenly smaller, the air charged with possibility and risk in equal measure. Outside, a siren wailed in the distance—the city's eternal soundtrack of urgency and crisis.
"Fine," Liz said at last, clapping her hands together with the sound of someone making a deal
"Then let's see how bad it really is. But I'm warning you now—if this turns out to be some sentimental journey to reconnect with family legacy, I'm billing you double."
They dove into the files with the methodical intensity of archaeologists excavating a disaster site. Each box revealed new layers of institutional dysfunction, decades of small compromises that had accumulated into an avalanche of problems.
For the next four hours, the room transformed into a proper war room—papers fanned across the marble table, documents spread across the leather couch and hardwood floor like evidence at a crime scene. Bill commandeered one end of the table, his calculator working overtime as he scribbled calculations on a yellow legal pad, muttering occasionally about "creative accounting" and "basic mathematical principles."
Lucas spread performance evaluations across the coffee table, reading each one with the slow, deliberate frown of someone who understood that every document represented a real person's livelihood. His background in football had taught him that teams succeeded or failed based on individual performance, and he approached HR files with the same attention to detail he'd once brought to studying game film.
Liz had claimed the couch, contracts and legal documents arrayed around her like battle plans. She leafed through each one with a growing expression of professional disgust, occasionally making notes in margins or muttering things that would have made a sailor blush.
George kept them supplied with an endless stream of coffee, sandwiches cut into precise triangles, and—when Liz demanded it with the imperious tone of someone accustomed to getting her way—two slices of chocolate cake that were probably worth more than most people's daily wages.
Outside, the sky cycled through its daily performance: gray morning giving way to pale afternoon, then deepening into the rich blue of early evening. The city lights began winking on in clusters, transforming the view from documentary realism to impressionist painting.
As the hours passed, William found himself caught between fascination and horror. The documents told the story of a company dying by degrees, each decision seemingly rational in isolation but collectively forming a pattern of institutional suicide. It was like watching a slow-motion car crash, except the car was his family's legacy and the crash had been happening for years.
By the time they finished their initial survey, William's eyes felt like they'd been scoured with sandpaper. The coffee had long since stopped helping, and the weight of accumulated bad news sat on his shoulders like a lead blanket
He looked up from the last binder, blinking away the fatigue. "All right," he said, his voice hoarse from hours of silence broken only by occasional exclamations of disbelief. "Thoughts? And please don't sugarcoat it—I need to know exactly how screwed we are.
Bill set down his pencil and laced his fingers together in the precise gesture he used when delivering particularly bad news to clients. "Good news first, because there isn't much of it. Harrow is essentially debt-free. Your family seems to be paranoid about loans, so at least you won't be fighting creditors."
He paused, and William could practically feel the "but" coming
"Bad news—if you keep running it the same way, you'll burn through your cash reserves in two, maybe three years if you're lucky. After that, it's Chapter 11 and liquidation. The company is haemorrhaging money faster than a punctured artery.
William closed his eyes, trying to absorb the impact. He'd expected as much from what he'd seen in the preliminary reports, but hearing it stated so bluntly was like being hit with a sledgehammer.
"And your accountants," Bill continued with the relentless precision of a coroner delivering a cause of death, "are either completely incompetent or actively complicit in fraud. They're cooking the books, and they're doing it poorly. I'm honestly amazed no one's gone to prison yet. Seriously, don't you people have annual audits? Because if you do, somebody's been paying off the auditors."
Liz lifted her head from where she'd been resting it in her hand, her hair falling in copper waves around her face. "They're selling cars below cost. Did you see that gem? They're literally paying customers to drive away with their inventory."
Bill nodded grimly. "It's worse than that. You're burning cash faster than you can generate it, selling vehicles below production cost and booking the losses as 'deferred earnings.' Which—let's be absolutely clear—is financial idiocy of the highest order. It's like setting money on fire and calling it an investment strategy."
"How is that even legal?" William asked, though he suspected he didn't want to know the answer.
"Technically, it might not be," Bill said. "But that's a problem for later. Right now, you've got bigger issues. Like the pension obligations."
William felt his stomach drop. "How bad?"
Bill didn't flinch, delivering the numbers with the clinical detachment of a surgeon. "About $150 million unfunded, give or take. The actuarial models your people used assumed stable investment returns and predictable lifespans. Neither assumption held up. The retirees are living longer, health costs are skyrocketing faster than inflation, and the pension fund's investments have performed about as well as a chocolate teapot."
"Jesus Christ," William muttered.
"The only reason it's not showing up on the balance sheet is because it's being amortized over several decades. Which is legal, technically, but it's also like ignoring a tumor because it's growing slowly."
Liz looked up at Bill with something approaching professional admiration. "Wait—you can see all that from these numbers? Because I've been through every contract and legal filing, and most of this wasn't mentioned anywhere."
"Not directly," Bill admitted with the modesty of someone who routinely performed financial miracles. "But one of the junior accountants flagged it in some meeting minutes from last year. The concerns were noted and promptly ignored by senior management."
Liz whistled, a sound that managed to convey both impression and foreboding. "Well. Good for them for trying. Bad for everyone else that nobody listened."
William rubbed his forehead, feeling the beginnings of what promised to be a spectacular headache. "Anything salvageable? Any reason not to just walk away and let it die?"
"Sure," Bill said with the careful optimism of someone who'd seen worse companies survive. "But it's going to take radical surgery. We're talking about amputating limbs to save the patient."
Lucas set down a thick file and stretched his massive frame. "HR is a complete train wreck, but it's fixable. Maybe."
William blinked, surprised by the note of hope in his friend's voice. "How do you figure?"
"Simple. You can fire the incompetent ones." Lucas's expression was matter-of-fact, but William caught the steel underneath. "The union will object, obviously, but you're still operating under at-will employment. They can't stop you if you document proper cause. Mangement staff would be easier."
"And can we document cause?"
Lucas's smile was grim. "Oh, absolutely. The problem is that your current HR department doesn't keep proper records—no performance evaluations, no documented warnings, no paper trail of any kind. So if you want to terminate anyone on the factory floor, you'll need to build cases from scratch."
He gestured at the scattered files. "But trust me, with this crowd, they'll give you all the justification you need. Most of them are so comfortable in their incompetence that they've stopped even pretending to do their jobs."
Liz sipped her coffee, which had long since gone cold. "So basically, they can't stop you if you play it smart and document everything."
Lucas nodded. "And the timing might actually work in your favour. With the Landrum-Griffin Act cracking down on union corruption and all those investigations in the news, public sentiment isn't exactly pro-union right now. Courts, press, politicians—everyone's more likely to believe management if this turns ugly."
"Timeframe?" William asked, though he suspected he wouldn't like the answer.
"Minimum one to two years to clean house without triggering a full-scale war. You'll need to be surgical about it—pick your battles, document everything, make sure you can justify every decision in court if necessary."
William sighed. "And if I want complete cultural change? Top to bottom organizational transformation?"
Lucas's expression grew serious, the way it did when he was calculating odds that weren't in anyone's favour. "That's a different animal entirely. Culture change means surveys, strategic planning, retraining programs, new systems, new procedures. You're looking at three years minimum, probably closer to five if you want it to stick."
"Bloody hell," William muttered, borrowing one of his father's favourite expressions.
Liz tapped her pen against the marble table in a steady rhythm that matched William's growing anxiety. "We're burying the lede here, boys. You realize you could solve most of this in six months if you just did what I suggested earlier."
"No," William said automatically, not even needing to think about it.
Her grin was pure predator, all teeth and dangerous intentions. "You don't even know which option I mean yet."
"Yes, I do. You mean buying it through a shell company, breaking it up, selling the profitable parts to Zephyr, and burning the rest. Asset stripping dressed up as corporate restructuring."
Her smile widened. "You make it sound so unromantic. I prefer to think of it as 'maximizing shareholder value through strategic divestiture.'"
"It's still dismantling everything my family built."
"But it would be effective. And profitable. Very profitable."
William sighed, the weight of generations pressing down on his shoulders. "I'm not ready to do that. Not yet."
"Yet," she corrected with the persistence of someone who'd spent years wearing down opposing counsel. "The key word there is 'yet.'"
"Liz."
"Fine, fine. Your sentimental attachment to corporate legacy is duly noted." She flipped a folder closed with theatrical flair. "But if you're determined to play saviour, you'll need to renegotiate supplier contracts, clean up those ridiculous NDAs—seriously, who wrote these things?—and settle the pending lawsuits. Especially that class action over the defective brake systems."
She paused, her expression shifting from amused to genuinely concerned. "Speaking of which, what the hell is your quality control team actually doing? Because based on these recall notices, they're either asleep at the wheel or actively sabotaging the company."
"Apparently nothing useful," William grumbled, making a mental note to put quality control at the top of his list of departments that needed immediate attention.
For a moment, no one spoke. The only sound was the soft hum of the HVAC system and the distant rumble of traffic far below. The city lights had fully emerged now, turning the windows into a canvas of scattered diamonds against black velvet.
Then Bill cleared his throat in the careful way that meant he was about to suggest something nobody wanted to hear. "You know, there is another option. A middle path between Liz's scorched-earth approach and trying to save everything."
William looked up, suddenly interested despite himself.
"A buyout," Bill continued. "You could consolidate ownership, force a complete reset. Clean slate, new management structure, renegotiated contracts. Keep what works, fix what's broken, eliminate what's hopeless."
William hesitated. He'd been thinking the same thing for the past hour, but hearing it suggested by someone else made it feel real in a way that was both terrifying and liberating.
"I've been considering it," he admitted, the words feeling strange in his mouth. "But it would mean..."
"It would mean taking complete control," Liz finished. "No more board politics, no more family drama, no more committee decisions. Just you, calling the shots."
Lucas raised an eyebrow. "You're serious about this? What happens to Zephyr?"
"I don't know yet," William said, and the uncertainty in his voice surprised him. "But if I'm going to try to save Harrow—really save it, not just put it on life support—I need complete control. No interference, no second-guessing, no committees voting down every decision that might actually work."
He turned to Liz, knowing he was about to cross a line he couldn't uncross. "If I decide to do this... will you handle it? The acquisition, I mean. All the legal work."
She studied him for a long moment, her expression unusually gentle. Behind the sharp lawyer's facade, he caught a glimpse of the friend who'd stayed up all night helping him study for finals, who'd talked him through his doubts about starting Zephyr, who'd been there for every major decision of his adult life.
"Yes," she said simply. "But it won't be cheap. We'll need external firms for some of this—probably Goldman Sachs for the financial structuring, maybe Davis Polk for the regulatory work. And that's just the beginning."
"I figured as much."
"And the money? Because we're talking about a lot of money. More than most people see in several lifetimes."
William smiled faintly, the first genuine smile he'd managed since the phone call that morning
"Don't worry about the money. I'll have it by January."
He didn't mention the rest—that he'd been watching the market for months, studying the patterns and preparing for what every experienced trader knew was coming. The so-called Kennedy Slide was going to create opportunities for those who were positioned correctly, and William had been positioning himself very carefully indeed.
The room fell quiet again, but this time the silence felt different. Like a calm before storm.