Chapter 248: The Vote
"Sometimes," he said.
"Consistently," said Clara, not looking up from her notepad.
Thomas looked at his hands for a moment. Then at the room. "The round parameters Sean described. I want a vote on whether to proceed with those parameters as the basis for the post-vote conversation."
"Yes," said David immediately.
"Yes," said Rachel.
Stefan Vogel looked at the table. "Yes."
Caroline Reyes nodded. "Yes."
Thomas looked at Clara.
"I’ve been modeling the round at these parameters for a week," she said. "Yes." She finally looked up from the notepad. "With one addition."
"What addition," said Thomas.
"Sean leads the investor conversation," she said. "Not as an advisor. As a participant with specific responsibilities. His network, his analysis, his read of who the right investors are." She held Thomas’s gaze. "We built the seventeen shareholder count with his help. We’re going to build the right funding round cap table with his help."
Thomas looked at Sean.
"Is that something you want," said Thomas.
Sean thought about Laurent Fischer’s call. About Marcus and Derek’s cap table analysis. About a room on the third floor of the business building that had become something different over two Thursday evenings.
"Yes," he said.
"Then that’s what we do after Friday," said Thomas.
The board meeting continued for another hour. Clara walked through the specific financial parameters, the dilution calculations, the timeline. David asked precise product development questions that informed what the round needed to fund. Rachel talked about the investor communication strategy that would follow the vote.
Sean listened more than he spoke. The room had found its own direction and his job was to be part of that direction rather than to drive it.
At one point he looked at Clara across the table.
She was writing something on the notepad, her pen moving with the specific efficiency she brought to everything, and she felt him looking and glanced up.
Their eyes met for a moment.
She looked back at her notepad.
But the corner of her mouth moved slightly, the specific movement of someone who had noticed something and had decided not to make it into a thing yet.
He looked back at the room.
The meeting wrapped at four fifteen.
People gathered their things. Thomas shook Sean’s hand with the specific firmness of someone who had been through something with a person and was acknowledging it. David nodded with the technical precision that was his version of warmth. Rachel hugged him briefly, which surprised him, and then looked entirely unembarrassed about having done it.
Stefan and Caroline left together, talking quietly about something he didn’t catch.
He and Clara were the last two in the room.
She was looking at the board table, at the scattered notes and glasses of water, the specific aftermath of a room where something had been decided.
"Stefan," she said.
"I know," said Sean.
"He read the paragraph four times," she said.
"I heard him," said Sean.
"That paragraph almost didn’t exist," she said.
"I know," he said. "I’m glad it does."
She looked at him across the board table, this specific conference room where they’d had their second meeting and where the funding round conversation had just happened and where the whole arc of the last three weeks lived somewhere in the room’s atmosphere.
"Three days," she said.
"Three days," he said.
"And then you’re going to tell me the things I’ve been filing," she said.
"After the vote," he said.
"After the vote," she confirmed.
She picked up her notepad and walked toward the door. At the threshold she paused.
"Sean," she said, without turning around.
"Yeah."
"Thank you," she said. Simply. The same way she said things that actually mattered, without anything layered on top.
"You did the work," he said.
"We did the work," she said.
She walked out.
He stood in the empty conference room for a moment.
He looked at the product dashboard through the glass wall.
Three hundred and forty.
Eighty-seven percent.
Three days.
He picked up his phone and called James.
In the car he texted Fischer.
Board approved the round parameters today. After Friday I’d like to have a proper conversation.
Fischer replied in eleven minutes.
I’ll be available. Good luck Friday. Though from what I can read of the situation luck seems redundant.
Sean looked at that.
The count is there, he replied.
I know, said Fischer. That’s what I meant.
=======================
Friday arrived the way significant days arrived, without announcing themselves differently from any other day until you were inside them.
Sean woke at six thirty.
He made coffee.
His phone showed three messages already.
Thomas, sent at six fifteen. Ready. See you at nine forty-five.
Clara, sent at six forty. Arrived at the office early. Going through the shareholder list one more time. I know the count is there. I’m going through it anyway.
Helen Park, sent at six fifty-two. Statement is ready. I’ve read it four times and I’m done reading it. See you at ten.
He replied to all three with the same word.
Good.
He dressed carefully. Not impressively. Correctly. The specific distinction Makima had made before the Kwon dinner and that had stayed with him since.
He went downstairs.
Makima was in the lobby.
She wasn’t checking mail. She wasn’t doing building maintenance tasks. She was standing near the entrance with her coffee in both hands and she looked at him when he came off the elevator with the expression she had when something she’d been watching build over months was about to arrive somewhere.
"Today," she said.
"Today," he said.
She looked at him properly. At the way he was carrying himself. At whatever she read in his face with the specific accuracy of someone who had been reading him across dinners and dishes and building lobbies for months.
"You’re not nervous," she said.
"No," he said.
"But you feel it," she said. "The weight of it."
"Yes," he said.
She nodded. "That’s the right thing to feel." She reached out and briefly straightened his collar, the specific precise gesture, and then stepped back. "Go."