The number on the screen didn't change no matter how long I stared at it.

Negative $2.3 million.

I'd been staring for eleven minutes. I knew because the clock on Daniel Mercer's wall ticked with the particular cruelty of clocks in rooms where bad news lives loud, unhurried, indifferent to the fact that my entire life was quietly detonating in front of a man who smelled like sandalwood and regret.

"Sophia." Daniel folded his hands on the desk. He had the voice of someone who'd delivered verdicts like this before and had learned to soften the edges.

"I want you to understand that First Capital values its relationship with Calloway and Co. This isn't"

"How long?" I said.

A pause. "Ninety days. After which the bank will be compelled to"

"How did this happen?" The question came out quieter than I intended. Quieter than I felt.

Daniel shifted in his chair. "The Hartwell contract falling through created a gap that your Q3 projections couldn't absorb. Combined with the delayed Series B and the Meridian partnership dissolving"

"I know what happened." I did. I'd watched each piece fall like dominoes in slow motion for six months, scrambling to prop one up while another tipped. "I'm asking how we got here when three months ago you told me we had a runway until Q2 next year."

Something crossed his face. Fast, and then gone. "Markets move quickly."

I looked at him. Really looked.

He didn't meet my eyes.

I'd known Daniel Mercer for four years. He'd attended my father's funeral. He'd shaken my hand when I took over the company at twenty-three with nothing but a death certificate and a balance sheet that looked like a crime scene. He'd called me brave, which was what people said when they meant foolish.

"Daniel." My voice was very careful. "Did someone contact you?"

"I don't know what you"

"Did someone contact First Capital about our account?"

The clock ticked. Once. Twice.

"I think," he said, finally, "that you should consider all your options. Including acquisition offers."

My stomach turned to stone.

"There's been an expression of interest," he continued, reaching for a folder with the particular slowness of a man who knows exactly what he's handing over. "A very generous one, given the current"

I took the folder. I opened it.

Victor Hale. Hale Consolidated.

I closed it.

"No," I said.

"Sophia, the offer is"

"I said no." I stood. My legs were steadier than they had any right to be. "Victor Hale has been trying to get his hands on my father's company for a decade. He'll gut it in six months and sell the software to the highest bidder. I won't sign over my father's life's work to the man who" I stopped. Breathed. "No."

Daniel stood too. "Then I strongly encourage you to find alternative financing within sixty days. Realistically sixty, not ninety to allow time for processing. If you can't"

"I will."

I picked up my bag. My hands didn't shake until I was in the elevator.

The city looked the same.

That was the obscene part. I stood on the sidewalk outside First Capital's glass tower and the city just continued. Taxis and pigeons and a woman arguing on her phone about something that sounded genuinely trivial. The sky was the flat, indifferent gray of early November.

I had sixty days to save my father's company.

I pulled out my phone and called Lena.

She picked up on the first ring, which meant she'd been waiting.

Lena Park had been my best friend since college and my COO for two years, and she had an almost supernatural ability to sense incoming disasters. "How bad?" she said, skipping hello entirely.

"Bad."

"Scale of one to we're-moving-to-Bali."

"Somewhere around we're-considering-our-options."