Chapter 11: Forty-Eight Hours
The first line of the letter read: “Pursuant to Section 11(b) of the Private Credit Facility Agreement dated [execution date], the Lender hereby exercises its right to demand full and immediate repayment of all outstanding principal, accrued interest, and applicable fees within forty-eight (48) hours of this notice.”
Ryan read it standing at his kitchen counter. He had not yet made coffee. He read it again sitting down.
Section 11(b). He found it on page eleven of the original agreement — the clause he had skimmed at signing, the one his attorney had noted in passing without flagging as a risk because Ryan had not asked him to look too closely. The clause permitted Fitch to demand early repayment in full, with forty-eight hours’ notice, if the borrower’s “overall creditworthiness materially deteriorated” at Fitch’s sole discretion.
There was no definition of material deterioration. There was no appeals process. There was no appeal at all.
The outstanding balance on the Fitch facility, after thirty-one days of eighteen percent annualized interest and the two-point origination fee deducted at drawdown, was $3.94 million. He had forty-eight hours to produce it.
His holding company had $211,000 in operating accounts. His personal accounts had been folded into the holding structure months ago to simplify his tax position. His credit line — the institutional line that had been the backstop for every short-term cash requirement for the past four years — had been frozen following the derogatory notation on his credit report from the Apex covenant breach. The notation was supposed to have been cleared. It had not been fully cleared. No one had told him.
He called Dan Forsythe. The call went to voicemail.
He called twice more. He left one message, precise and controlled, and deleted the second attempt before it could become something he couldn’t take back.
Then he sat at the kitchen counter and thought through the list of people who could produce four million dollars in forty-eight hours for a borrower whose credit was compromised, whose development was stalled, whose investors had gone quiet, and whose existing lender was the reason for all of it.
The list was short. Then it was shorter. Then it was empty.
He went to the window. Forty-one floors below, the city was doing what it always did — moving, producing, generating, completely indifferent to the specific financial emergency of any one person standing at any one window looking down at it.
He pulled out his phone and opened a contact he had not used in three years.
The contact was labeled only with initials: D.M.
His thumb hovered for a long time.
Then he put the phone down.
He was not ready to admit, not yet, what it would mean to make that call.