Chapter 2: I Don't Do Anything Halfway

Cole did not extend his hand. Instead, he handed her a business card that had his name and three phone numbers on it, nothing else. She took it because not taking it would have been a gesture, and she had already made enough gestures in the last hour.

"One other thing," Cole said as she was leaving. "If you have a serious objection to any of this, tell me now. But if you're going to do this, you need to know that I'm thorough. I don't do anything halfway."

"I'm thorough too," Isla said. It came out with more confidence than she felt.

"I know," Cole said. He looked down at his notes. "You've built two companies. The first failed because you insisted on paying fair trade minimums before anyone else was doing it. The second failed because you refused venture capital that came with strings. This one is working because you finally understand that compromise is a tool, not a surrender. I read your founder interviews."

She didn't know what to say to this. No one had ever read her founder interviews and extracted that specific narrative from them. Most people extracted something about "disrupting" fashion or "scaling" sustainability. He had extracted the thing that was true about her.

"I'll wait for your lawyer's call," she said.

"Good," Cole said. He was already looking at his phone, ready to move on to the next problem. "I'll probably marry you in six months. We can discuss alternatives when we meet with legal."

Isla walked out of the Landmark Partners conference room at 4:47 p.m. on a Tuesday in San Francisco with a term sheet she couldn't accept and a business card for a man who had just proposed a marriage of convenience like it was a reasonable solution to a business problem.

She was three blocks from the office when her hands started shaking — from the feeling that something had just tipped over the edge of probability into action. Cole Mercer had not asked if she wanted this. He had observed that she needed it and offered to be the solution. He had written it down. He had said his lawyer would call.

By tomorrow at nine in the morning, her life would have a legally binding option attached to it.

She laughed on the street corner like she had just heard a very good joke. A woman walking by gave her a wide berth. Isla didn't blame her.

Two weeks until she ran out of money. Twelve months until she had to prove stability. A marriage contract that didn't exist yet, drafted by a man who solved matching problems like they were the only thing that mattered.

She caught a cab back to her SoMa loft. She sat in the backseat and looked at Cole's business card. The stock was expensive. The printing was perfect. There was nothing else on it. No title. No website. Just his name and three ways to reach him, like the card was a problem and he was the solution.

She opened her laptop the moment she got home. Pulled up everything she could find about Cole Mercer. Articles about his fund. Brief mentions in venture press. A picture of him at a Stanford business school event from ten years ago, looking exactly the same age and infinitely more controlled.

There was one thing worth reading. An interview with a founder who had sold her company to a firm that Cole sat on. The founder had described him as "the only person I trusted with this decision because he thought about it instead of just wanting it."

Isla closed her laptop. She opened it again. She read the interview once more. Then she set her phone aside and sat in the dark of her loft, listening to the sound of the city outside, waiting for her lawyer to wake up and receive a call that would change everything.

Tomorrow at nine in the morning, Cole Mercer's lawyer was going to call her lawyer.

She picked up the business card. Three phone numbers. Nothing else. She turned it over — blank — and set it back down.

The interview tab was still open on her laptop. She closed the lid without closing the tab.