At noon I watched my company go live from my kitchen counter.
The phone stood propped against the fruit bowl.
The ThinkPad sat open beside it, the order feed quiet.
The stove clock said 12:00.
I'd made coffee and not drunk it.
On the stream, the host waved at the camera.
Trevor leaned into the frame, sleeves up.
"Three, two, one — light it up!"
He pointed at the big monitor behind him.
Seventy inches of my homepage blinked.
Then it went white.
404 Not Found
Black letters, top left, nothing else.
The comments came faster than I could read them.
404??
site down
lol
is this part of it
The viewer count kept climbing.
Bad news sells better than candles.
"Little hiccup, everybody," Trevor said.
"Holiday traffic."
"That's how you know it's hot."
The host laughed a beat late.
"So what's in the box?" she asked him.
"Fir," Trevor said.
"Fir and frost."
"You'll smell it through the screen."
He'd never once poured it.
At 12:01, Colby came into frame with a laptop.
He's 31 and wears a hoodie to everything.
Tasha said he bills $140 an hour.
Some of those hours had gone to finding my runbook.
"Backup link," he said.
"Myshopify address."
"Skips the domain."
He typed.
The monitor changed.
It wasn't white anymore.
It was the password page I'd turned on at 11:59.
Opening soon
A box under it asked for a password.
Nobody on that set had it.
"Fix it," Trevor said.
Nobody had told Colby the host's boom mic was live.
Or he'd stopped caring.
"I can't."
"The owner pulled my permissions."
"Domain's registered to Joanna Varga."
"Store owner's Joanna Varga."
"Payments are under her Social."
"I asked her for ownership Saturday."
"She declined."
"So reset it," Trevor said.
"It's a password, Colby."
"It's not a password."
"It's her name."
Colby turned the laptop so Trevor could see.
I knew what was on it.
Settings, Users, one line at the top.
The chat lost its mind.
who is joanna pruitt
THE STORE'S DOWN
wait the cofounder??
The count hit 6,800 and held.
Nobody was leaving.
They wanted to see who'd get blamed.
Royce stepped out from behind the camera.
He still had the coat on.
He didn't look at Trevor.
He looked into the lens.
"You told me the platform was ours."
He said it like a man reading it into a record.
"It IS ours," Trevor said.
"We pay for it."
"Every month."
Royce didn't answer him.
He let the camera hold on Trevor's face.
The host backed out of the frame, still smiling, one small step at a time.
At 12:04, I saw Tasha.
She was at the back of the shot, by the stack.
She'd picked up one of the amber jars.
My jar, the one from the napkin.
She held it the way you'd hold a bird.
I put my hand flat on the counter.
I'd just set fire to the thing I made.
Nobody in that chat knew who'd made it.
Three thousand boxes I'd designed were now a backdrop for a man saying "hiccup."
Then the feed on the ThinkPad blinked.
Thirty-seven orders.
Thirty-seven strangers who'd paid before 11:59.
That part was mine to fix.
I opened the first one and clicked Refund.
Then the next.
Tulsa.
Refund.
Boise.
Refund.
Mobile.
Refund.
Each one sent a receipt back to someone's inbox.
The stove clock said 12:05.
At 12:06, the last one cleared.
Refunded: 37 orders · $2,516.00
Nobody who trusted the button lost a dollar.
At 12:09, my phone rang under the stream.
Trevor.
On the stream, he was holding his phone up high.
"Watch this," he told 6,800 people.
He put it on speaker.
I answered.
"Jo."
"Point it back."
"Now."
"You told an investor it was all yours," I said.
"The 404 page disagrees."
Three seconds later, my own voice came out of the stream, smaller.
Royce turned his head.
"Jo, there are people watching."
"I know," I said.
"I can see them."
"This is extortion," Trevor said.
"It's a domain I paid for in 2018."
I hung up.
On the stream, he was still holding the phone out.
Like it might ring back.
The chat had already clipped it.
"the 404 page disagrees" LMAOOO
Someone typed the only question that mattered.
who owns a candle company with no store??
The brand was theirs.
The plumbing wasn't.
Colby shut his laptop.
"I'm off the clock," he said to nobody.
Trevor had turned to Royce, too close to the mic.
"You said she wouldn't do it."
"You said you owned it," Royce said.
"You read me her text," Trevor said.
"You said founders fold."
"Not on camera," Royce said.
It was already on camera.
The host asked someone off camera if they were still live.
They were, for five more minutes.
At 12:14, the stream cut.
The last thing the mic caught was Royce, quiet and even.
"Then we take it from her."