The Morrison Industries office was a shrine to mediocrity and inherited complacency. James Morrison sat behind his grandfather's desk like a child in an adult's chair; the oak panels and family portraits surrounding him felt less like a legacy and more like a prison. Elizabeth recognised the feeling from her research. A man trapped by expectation, drowning in obligation, absolutely certain of his own inadequacy.
It was almost pathetic.
"Ms Wynsor," he said as she took her seat, his voice rough from weeks of boardroom warfare he was clearly losing. "Thank you for meeting with me personally."
"I don't typically conduct acquisitions at this level," Elizabeth replied, her tone suggesting that his company was doing him a favour by even considering his proposals. "But your situation presented an interesting case study. Generational wealth meeting generational incompetence. I wanted to observe the phenomenon directly."
She let the insult hang in the air without apology. James flinched slightly, confirming what her research had already suggested: he knew he was failing, and he blamed himself for it. This would make him easy to break.
"Before we discuss terms," he said, gesturing toward the frames on the wall, photographs of family moments, business achievements, and three generations of Morrisons staring into the camera with varying degrees of confidence, "I need you to understand what this company is. Morrison Industries isn't lines on a spreadsheet. My father worked himself to death in this office. Grandad built it during a depression with nothing but luck and grit. The people in those photographs, most of their children, still work for us. If you dismantle us, you're not just buying assets. You're rewriting lives."
Elizabeth studied the photographs without interest. They meant nothing to her except insofar as they explained James's weakness. He was motivated by sentiment and obligation, the emotional architecture of someone who'd never learnt that other people's survival was irrelevant compared to optimal resource allocation.
"Sentimental attachment is a luxury the market doesn't afford," Elizabeth said coolly. "Your grandfather's luck has run out. Your father's grit is a generational asset you haven't inherited. That's not my problem to solve."
James slid a file across the desk, restructuring proposals, alternative approaches, promises to salvage jobs if she'd negotiate with mercy. Elizabeth didn't open it. She'd already reviewed his proposals through her legal team. They were pathetic: a man desperately trying to keep his ship afloat with a teaspoon.
"Your plan isn't viable," she said flatly. "You're fighting against realities you don't have the intellectual capacity to fully comprehend. Your creditors don't care about your family legacy. Your shareholders don't care about your workers' job security. The market is indifferent to your emotional investment in an obsolete business model. These aren't obstacles you can overcome through goodwill. They're structural failures."
She paused, allowing him to absorb the magnitude of his situation. "Your company is going to fail. The only variable is who profits from that failure."
"Your bank will close us with or without you," James said, his voice cracking with desperation. "But you can decide how much blood is on your hands."
Elizabeth felt a flicker of something like contempt. As if her hands were ever "clean". As if she'd built her empire by avoiding necessary brutality. This man was appealing to a conscience she didn't possess, a moral framework she'd never agreed to operate within.
"I don't experience guilt," Elizabeth said, her tone deliberately clinical. "I'm not wired for it. I understand acquisitions from a purely strategic perspective. Your question suggests you believe I have emotional stakes in outcomes. I don't. I have financial stakes. Those are entirely different."
James's face went pale. It was clearly the first moment he'd encountered someone for whom his suffering was simply irrelevant data.
"Let me be direct," Elizabeth continued, leaning back in her chair with the casual authority of someone conducting an autopsy on something already dead. "I will acquire Morrison Industries. I will liquidate approximately sixty percent of your assets. I will retain your premium accounts and consolidate them with my existing portfolio. Your factory workers will be terminated. Your senior staff will be offered positions in my organisation at approximately fifty percent of their current salaries. The Morrison name will be retained for branding purposes because your customers have an emotional attachment to it. Beyond that, Morrison Industries as a familial entity will cease to exist."
"You could at least offer redundancy packages-"
"No," Elizabeth said. "I could offer them. I'm choosing not to. Those packages cost capital I'd rather deploy elsewhere. Your workers will experience unemployment, hardship, and probably substantial financial difficulty. This is unfortunate for them. It's irrelevant to me."
She watched James absorb this and watched the moment his resistance crumbled into something resembling acceptance. This was always the point where people realised they weren't negotiating with someone who could be reasoned with. They were negotiating with a force of nature that had decided their preferences were inconvenient.
"I will give you," Elizabeth said, allowing a fraction more softness into her tone, not from mercy, but from tactical calculation, "one concession. Your senior staff will receive four weeks' notice rather than immediate termination. This is not kindness. It's logistics. I need continuity during the acquisition transition. Their early termination would disrupt my timeline."
"That's not a concession," James said bitterly. "That's just standard business practice."
"Exactly," Elizabeth replied. "You should be grateful I'm adhering to standard practice at all. I could handle this far more aggressively."
James looked at the photographs on his wall: his grandfather, his father, and himself at graduation with genuine hope in his eyes. Elizabeth recognised the specific type of devastation moving across his face: the realisation that all of that hope had been built on a foundation that couldn't hold. That his family's legacy was about to be erased by someone who didn't even have the courtesy to pretend she cared.
"Your legacy," Elizabeth said, standing to indicate the meeting was concluded, "is going to be that you tried and failed. Your grandfather would probably be disappointed. Your father would probably be ashamed. You have the distinct disadvantage of knowing both of those things while they're still alive. That's unfortunate. But it's not my concern."
She collected her briefcase with the casual indifference of someone who'd just concluded a mildly interesting business transaction. "My team will contact you with preliminary documents within the week. I suggest you prepare your workers for termination. False hope is crueller than honest despair."
James sat motionless behind his grandfather's desk, and Elizabeth left him there without a backward glance. She'd already moved on mentally; the Morrison Industries acquisition was now simply a line item in her quarterly projections, notable only for the efficiency with which she'd dismantled his resistance.