Monday at 7:30, I made the sweep.
I've made it every Monday since March 2, 2020.
Coffee, laptop, credit union login.
The ThinkPad didn't care who ran Slack.
The week's Shopify payouts sat in ••4417.
$14,212.40
I moved all of it to the LLC operating account.
Transfer to ••7730 · $14,212.40 · Completed
That made three hundred.
Three hundred Mondays, same two accounts, same direction.
Being locked out didn't change what Mondays were for.
At 10:00 I was on Market Street, in an office that looked out at the river.
Vivian Okafor is 52 and litigates for partners who've stopped being friends.
Her desk had nothing on it but a stapler and my problem.
She'd asked me to bring paper.
I brought a folder.
The operating agreement.
Schedule A.
The registrar page, printed.
The store's user page, printed.
She read for eleven minutes without a word.
I timed it on her wall clock.
"The LLC was formed February 10, 2020," she said.
"Yes."
"The domain is from 2018."
"March 9."
"The store?"
"April 15, same year."
"Payments?"
"Same day, under my Social."
"As a sole proprietor?"
"Yes."
She turned to the last page of the agreement.
Schedule A was one page.
My contribution was one line.
$20,000 cash and use of the online store, domain and payments accounts held by J. Varga.
"Use of," Vivian said.
"Not title."
"And no term."
"Is that bad?"
"For them."
She tapped the line with her pen.
"Was anything ever assigned to the company?"
"No."
"Did anyone ask?"
"No."
"They pay the Shopify bill?"
"Since March 2020, on the company Amex."
"That's rent," she said.
"It doesn't buy the building."
She flipped to Section 9.2 and read it aloud.
"A member withdraws only on thirty days' written notice from that member."
"Did you give notice?"
"I gave him my badge."
"That's not notice."
"Then I'm still a member."
"You're still half."
She pulled over a legal pad.
"Your 1099-K comes out under your Social."
"Last year it said $1.94 million."
"Who paid the tax on it?"
"The company."
"My CPA files nominee returns."
"Every year since 2020."
"Five of them, in a binder."
"Good," she said.
"That's the first thing they'll swing at."
Then she gave me the rules, one finger each.
"Take nothing that's theirs."
"Refund anyone who pays."
"Don't touch their email."
"Don't compete while you're a member."
"Put it in writing."
"Why not court first?" I asked.
"A real ownership case is March."
"They'll try for an emergency order sooner."
"I can't promise you that one."
"Friday is Friday," I said.
She looked at me over her glasses.
"They will sue you."
"I know."
"Then send it today."
"Plain."
"No adjectives."
At 1:10, Tasha sent me an audio clip.
Local business podcast. Minute 14. Sorry.
It was Trevor, in a room with foam on the walls.
The host asked about the "co-founder shake-up."
Trevor laughed, easy and warm.
"Anybody who thinks they're essential can watch Friday."
The host laughed with him.
He didn't know what he was laughing at.
Neither did Trevor.
Tasha's next text came a minute later.
He said it like a joke. Nobody laughed here.
At 2:00, I sent the notice from my Gmail to his.
Two lines.
Under Schedule A, Lantern Row LLC's permission to use the store, domain and payments accounts registered to me ends Friday, November 28, at 11:59 AM.
Please make other arrangements before then.
I read it once after it left.
It didn't threaten anything.
It told him the time.
Three days, twenty-two hours, give or take a minute.
At 2:07, he hit reply-all.
He'd added Royce first.
Cute. Nobody needs your permission. Everything's ours.
That was the whole email.
He'd skipped the words "registered to me."
Or he'd read them and filed them under mood.
At 2:19, Royce answered.
Proceed as planned.
No greeting.
No name under it.
I forwarded both to Vivian.
She wrote back one word.
Perfect.
Trevor had dismissed my notice in writing.
He'd done it with his investor on the thread.
At 3:30, I opened the ThinkPad at the kitchen table.
The registrar took the code from my phone.
I found the domain's DNS settings.
TTL: 3600
An hour, for any change to reach the world.
I set it to sixty seconds.
Then I rented a one-page host for four dollars a month.
White screen.
No logo.
No candle.
It returned one thing.
404 Not Found
Two clicks would point the domain at it.
I didn't point anything at it.
The store kept selling fir candles to people in Vermont.
Trevor kept doing podcasts.
The page sat there, a minute from anywhere.
Before I closed the lid, I opened his email again.
Some emails you keep.
Cute. Nobody needs your permission.