If I'm Honest Ch. 11

Despite the fact that Jen was a scrapper and had sort of a rambunctious attitude, she'd also been the glue that had been holding the team together. The boisterous appearance concealed a very attentive heart that prioritized the well-being of her team members over any silly goals or milestones. It had been my very first lesson to her, and the one I'd told her would be the most important she'd ever learn, and she'd not only learned it, she'd incorporated it into every fiber of her being.

"If it were me, Jen, once you're in charge of the team, elevate Zack and put him in charge of the processes, and hire a replacement for you to handle the people, and more clearly mark out the difference between those two territories," I told her. "I've tried to get Zack to think more about the people he's working with as people but he's so focused on the bottom line that he's just kinda crap at the fuzzier aspects of all of this. Maybe have Zack working on the bots and automation processes, since those are going to become a bigger part of what the team does moving forward, so he feels like he's still getting some progress out of the deal, but I can't imagine a better person in charge of the whole division than you. You've earned it. I'll tell Larry on Monday, and they'll get started on the paperwork for it."

I stood up and held out my hand for her to shake, but she stood up and wrapped her arms around me in a big old squeezy hug, clenching onto me firmly. "I'm gonna miss the fuck outta you, boss," she said to me, tears in her eyes. "You promise me I'm not going to be playing against you soon?"

"Signing a non-compete clause even," I told her, ruffling her hair. "Gonna do something entirely different with my life."

"I can't believe you really don't have a plan for what comes next, boss," she laughed, pulling back, lifting her hand up to wipe her eyes, her makeup running a little. "You've always had a plan for everything ever." Nobody, apparently, had seen this coming, except for Larry. Maybe he wasn't quite as dense as I thought he was. Or maybe he just wasn't dense when it came to business.

The next few weeks sort of flew by, and while I didn't think about the bracelet much, I do remember thinking on my last day at Alexandria, when the company threw me a giant going away party, that it was odd I hadn't felt any pressure from Harvey during that stretch of time. Granted, I had spent most of the two weeks buried beneath a literal mountain of paperwork - Larry had taken me at my word, and made my $12 mil golden parachute dependent on me honoring a five-year non-compete clause, and he seemed pleased that I didn't even hesitate before signing it. After I read it carefully first, naturally, because while I may like Larry, that didn't mean I entirely trusted him.

The separation contract required one minor change, which we both initialed and agreed on. Apparently former employees were barred from ever setting foot on company property again, as a sort of security failsafe, but both Larry and Jen (who was indeed being installed as my replacement) wanted me to occasionally come by and consult just a little bit during a transitional period, checking in to make sure nothing was blowing up after I left it. I couldn't do that if I wasn't allowed to set foot on the grounds, not well anyway. And Larry told me it would be nice to see my smiling face once or twice a season for the next year or so.

At my going away party, Larry also made a handful of announcements, offically naming Jen as my replacement (even though the word had basically gotten around to nearly everyone by that point) but also announcing that his former secretary Ashley would be the new VP in charge of personnel development and management, the position I'd recommended he put her when I'd told him I was leaving. And he also announced that he'd given her a brand new Ducati as a gift to welcome her to her new position.

He got the name of the motorcycle right and everything.

I'd driven the Bugatti in to work, and so I'd been very careful not to drink much at the party. One of Larry's going away presents, however, had been an entire case of whiskey, something I assured him was completely unnecessary, but Larry was always over the top with his gifts and would not be talked out of it. It was loaded into the passenger seat, because it was too big to fit in the Chiron's measly trunk. I put the seatbelt around it, though, just to keep it safe.

The party was still going even after I left, but since I was done with the company, I decided I wanted to beat rush hour, and left as early as I could without anyone getting worked up about it, and headed back to my house, where to my surprise there was a car waiting out front.

When I pulled the Bugatti into the garage, I could see two men getting out of the car, walking towards me, so I didn't bother closing the garage door, heading over towards them as they wandered up my driveway. "Can I help you?"

"Are you Mister King? Mister Derrick King?"

I chuckled, nodding. "You here to serve me a subpoena or something?"

"Ha. Ha ha. No, Mister King, no subpoenas," the taller man said to him. They were both rather nondescript older white guys, silver hair and ridiculously expensive suits. One of them had a briefcase with him. "We wanted to talk to you about your property. We've been trying to reach you for about a month now, but it's always seemed you've been out and about whenever we've come by to get in contact with you."

"I'm Peterson, he's Morales. We're here to talk to you about your home. We'd like to make an offer to buy it."

"Like you've bought the rest of the houses on the block?" I said to them. "C'mon in. Let's have a conversation about this, and see what we can work out."

"That's quite a car that you have, Mr. King," Morales said to me. "Did you recently come into significant money?"

"The car was a gift from my boss, well, ex-boss, about a year ago, but I think I'm going to end up selling it," I said. "The insurance is insane. Not worth the hassle. It's a hell of a ride to drive, though, so it'll be tough parting with it. Still, people gawk and I'm terrified of parking it anywhere... more trouble than it's worth, you ask me."

We headed into the house and I moved to let Astro in from the back yard, as he bounded inside, happy as always to see me, but giving slight growls to the two men in suits, who were cautiously sitting down at my kitchen table.

"Easy, boy," I told him. "If I need you to bite, I'll tell you."

Astro gave a quiet satisfied woof and then moved over to his bowl, eager to eat, as I poured his food into it.

"So I'm sure you've heard Mister King, but we've been buying up all the houses on this block, with plans to convert the entire lot into an eight floor condominium building, something that will suit the needs of the neighborhood much better than all this... wasted land is currently doing," Peterson said to me. "Lawns and yards - it's all so 1950s and so very wasteful. So our plan is to turn the block into a much more efficient use of space. Oh, we will still put a public park on the top of it, so that we're working to offset our carbon footprint and helping beautify the neighborhood."

"Sounds like you have quite the plan," I told them, picking up Astro's mostly empty water dish, running it under the sink to fill it up. "And just one little problem standing in the way... me."

"Come now, Mister King. You've only owned this house for five years, and you've done no real major modifications since buying it. This was never going to be a forever home for you; it's a way station on the way to something bigger and better and more interesting. Why, just selling your car alone would likely net you enough money to purchase a house three or four times the size of this one, not including what we're offering you."

I chuckled softly, rubbing my Husky's back a bit while he snarfed down his dinner. "And here comes the offer. Cash in hand, I'm guessing, just like you were the neighbors?"

"Naturally, Mister King. One point three million dollars in cash, significantly more than we offered your neighbors, many of whom had much longer and deeper emotional connections to their homes. You were supposed to be made an offer on the same day as everyone else, but you weren't at home, despite the fact that your schedule indicated you should've been."

"My schedule is much less reliable than my nine-to-five neighbors, or at least it used to be," I said. "I just recently parted ways with my previous employer. My choice, not theirs."

"You see, Mister King? You don't need to be here anymore anyway," Peterson said to me. They both came across as slimy, but I'd also done my homework into their group. To say I'd been expecting them would be an understatement. Since Madison had told me about them a couple of weeks ago, I'd deliberately kept my schedule hard to predict, coming and going at odd hours, while doing some research into who these two guys were. I still didn't fully understand why an old white guy had a Hispanic last name like Morales, but other than that, I knew plenty about the two of them.

Despite their approach, they weren't horrible people. They were just impatient. They were real estate developers used to getting what they wanted and encountering not much in the way of resistance. The plans for the building they wanted to construct were already on their way to get in front of the city planning commission. They were just mostly waiting on owning my house, and the land it was on. Since I'd bought the house outright, something pretty uncommon, they weren't able to try and buy the property out from under me via the bank, something they'd done before hand, although when they had, they'd always paid the current residents very well. It was mostly just how they did business that tended to irk people, with no regards for the neighborhood or the emotional turmoil they could cause to displaced people. They generally (and, sadly, almost always rightly) assumed they would be able to throw enough money at the problem to ease the suffering to everyone's eventual satisfaction.

Short term solutions at the expense of making longer term problems.

That's why I was a bit of a problem for them. If I wanted to, I could simply refuse to sell, and they would either have to build around me, which would greatly limit what they'd be able to do and would require months of redesign and work, or they would have to abandon their plans, something that it seemed like these two never did.

More than anything, they hated to lose.

"You two are legit frightened I'm going to tell you to go fuck yourselves, aren't you?" I chuckled. "I mean, I get it. You're kind of up Shits Creek if I do. Except that you've been looking into me while you've been trying to get in contact with me, just like I've been looking into you. You know, for example, exactly who I am and what company I just left, and how much money I walked away with, so if I say no, you won't really have much recourse. If I want it to not be about the money, I can make it not be about the money. But that's not what you're really scared of, is it? You guys like to gamble, doing all of this in cash so you can move the money quickly, and because, well, you two get a rush off of it. But it's a risk each and every time you do it, because if you don't get all of the land, your gamble backfires, and you're stuck trying to resell houses in a neighborhood you just forcibly emptied, that now looks desolate and vacant. It smells like something's wrong, even if nothing is."

"Are we arriving at a point any time soon, Mister King?" Morales asked me, concern dominating his face.

"Don't get your Underoos in a twist, boys," I laughed, walking out of the room for a moment and down the hall to my study, where I picked up a small stack of papers I'd been working on for the last week, before walking back down. "I'm going to sell you the house for your mil three offer. After you read and sign this," I said, tossing the papers down in front of them.

"What is this?"

"It's a few terms and conditions about what you're going to do with the building you're making, things that'll ensure you don't destroy this nice neighborhood you're setting up shop in. It's a contract," I said, "and it's been witnessed and notarized, my draft anyway. You want to make changes to it, we'll have to go through all that again, although it won't be too hard. Mrs. Desmond, one of the people whose houses you bought three weeks ago, doesn't move out until tomorrow, and I can get her to do it again. Go on, take a look, read through it."

"This is extremely unorthodox, Mister King," Peterson said, as his partner started to read it.

The document was only five pages long, detailing a handful of key changes that I was insisting upon. When I'd gone and looked at their proposal - I've got friends at the city planning commission too, so sneaking an early peek hadn't been hard - there were two major things that bothered the crap out of me about it.

The first was the ground floor - it was currently scheduled to be walled off, with little private yards for the people who paid the most, which would have been fine, except for the fact that walling it off was a great big sign that said go away. So in my document, I stated that the ground floor would instead be mixed use - a combination of shops and restaurants. It was the kind of thing I'd seen a lot of when I was in Europe, and it helped make the distinction between business and shop a little more muddled, and the community a little bit stronger. The contract would dictate there would be at least one restaurant on the ground floor of the building, open to everyone, and serving food at a reasonable price, not pricing out the locals so that the restaurant would fail immediately or be someplace they couldn't stop in every now and again.

That only took up a couple of pages and was the part I suspected they wouldn't put up much of a fuss over. It was the remaining three pages I expected them to give me shit over.

With the rest of the document, if they signed to it, they would be guaranteeing one floor of the eight story structure to being permanent low-income apartments, nothing anyone could own, but places that would always be for rent, targeted at struggling families, with fixed rent rates so that they couldn't just be continually rising until they became too much for anyone to afford. I fully expected it to be the second floor, just above the restaurants and shops I was making them build, which was fine. I had to let the two guys feel like they had some decisions in the matter, and the residents of the apartments would still have full access to any amenities that would be included in the building, such as the built-in gym they had on the existing blueprints. I wanted to ensure that while most of the building could be expensive condominiums, it wasn't going to be so out of touch with the common people that they lost touch with the community around them.

It was the fact that there would be apartments in the condominium building that I knew might give the two men pause, because it meant they couldn't as easily just flip and run, which was their usual MO. Sure, they could eventually sell the apartment floor on to some other real estate group, but the contract was transferable as well as being binding for forty years. By the end of that time, the entire neighborhood might have shifted so much as to make it all irrelevant. But anyone they sold it to would still be on the hook for maintaining the fixed income rents, which made it a less likely proposition for them to hand off. What it more likely meant was that the two men would sell all the condos but still be working to manage the apartments themselves.

It meant they couldn't just walk away, which was what they'd always done.

"In looking at this document, Mister King..." Peterson said. "This... this isn't us."

"We don't do this sort of thing," Morales added.

"Well, either you're going to, boys, or I'm not going to sell you this house and the plot of land it's on," I laughed, opening my fridge and pulling a beer out. "C'mon, it's not like I'm really raking you over the coals on this. I'm accepting your offer, as long as it includes that," I said, gesturing towards the document I'd handed them.

"Couldn't... couldn't we just offer you more money?" Morale implored.

"Except it's not about the money for me. In fact, tell you what. You accept the offer, and I'll take a cool mil, which is probably a little less than the house is worth," I said, popping the top off my beer. "You guys have done this a bunch, blown in, bought up land, built a tower then disappeared, moving on to some other opportunity. You need to be aware of how it affects the area around your tower when you do it, and getting you fuckers invested in the neighborhood is the only goddamn way I can think of to get you to do that." I took a draw off my beer, seeing the puzzled looks on their faces. "Honestly, fellas, it's for your own good. If you're gonna keep doing this kind of real estate speculation, you're going to get your hand caught in the cookie jar from time to time. But I'm letting you off light. Remember, I could've made this all disappear just by saying no. All I'm doing is ensuring you don't fuck up the neighborhood with your plans. You'll be fine. Trust me."

The two read the document a number of times, handing it back and forth, before they both signed it, pushing it across the table back to me, as I sat down and signed my half of it, while they pulled out the contract for my house and property out of the suitcase, atop stacks and stacks of bills. I scanned through their contract, and it gave me two weeks to vacate the property, with the demolition of it scheduled for the day after I left. The two were wasting absolutely no time, it seemed, so I guess me throwing a monkey wrench into the works had them very panicked, because they just gave me the one point three mil anyway.

I mean, I guess it was time. Most of the neighbors I liked were moving out in the same time window, and I felt like the place I'd moved into five years ago wasn't going to be there in a month anyway, regardless of if I stayed or went. Since I was parting ways with Alexandria Indexes, maybe it was time to part ways with Seattle as well. Sure, I had some great friends there - Ken, TJ and his husband David, among a handful of others - but it was also a chapter of my life I could sense was wrapping up.

I will tell you the one thing I decided to definitely do, though, now that I was sitting on a shitload of money - I decided to hire a service to move all my things into storage for me while I looked for a new place. I loaded up my large suitcase with clothes before hand, made sure I had all my chargers tucked in with my laptop, and took Astro to the first decent AirBnB I found within a hundred miles, then I let a bunch of strong guys move all my shit for me.

Oh, I sold off the Bugatti as well.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, because I have to talk about the other things first, because I didn't actually leave my house for a week's worth of time. The soonest I could get a reputable moving service to come and get all my shit and haul it away was seven days, which meant I had seven more days to say farewell to my house.

So the day after I sold my house, I went out drinking with Ken, TJ and David to a little speakeasy called The Knee High Stocking Co. We knew they were only open until midnight, so they were intended to be our first stop for the evening, as once I'd announced that I'd likely be moving out of town within a matter of weeks, it turned into a very sudden and very rowdy farewell party.