Chapter Four: The Sixty-Day Reckoning

8 million; its stabilized projection was nineteen million. For the first time, Lena’s balance sheet showed seven figures of net equity. She did not open champagne. She paid a first dividend to the forty-three employees who had stayed through the shutdown and funded a three-month debt reserve. Marcus read the announcement outside the hotel. “You’re rich on borrowed money.” “All growth uses leverage,” Lena said. “My debt grows cash flow. Your borrowed power only leaves bills.” After he left, Bayview’s elderly archivist brought her a wooden box from the old safe. It held no third crest, only an asset list signed by Gu Mingzhu twenty years earlier. Seven Sycamore and Bayview had been crossed out in red. The next line read: