If there is one thing I’ve learned over all my years negotiating, it is this: I can spot the stubborn inclined almost immediately. Not the easily stubborn now, they are normally swayed in a manner of minutes. It’s the mainstays themselves that you have to watch out for — the ones that won’t crack, no matter what.

I’m standing in a meeting room that’s tucked away in the back of the ground floor. Even though it is the biggest room they have at the hotel we are only a party of five: two lawyers, an adviser, myself and Thomas Bradley. The owner of the Bradley Hotel chain himself, and of course, Stacy Bradley’s father.

The latter is probably the most important point, and I’ve been keeping that in mind all morning as we talk through the deal. My company has plenty of interests elsewhere that are being seen to by my best employees, but this particular acquisition I wish to handle on my own, out of respect for my friendship with Thomas.

They sit at the large desk in the center of the room as I stand and go through the charts in the slideshow. This is the third time I’ve shown the slides to this group in as many days, now with certain changes and tweaks that I stayed up late to implement, but I can tell from their demeanor, the feel of the room, that it still makes no impact on them.

Rather, on Thomas. His lawyers, ever eager to reap in more money for themselves, have been trying to sway Thomas’ mind toward selling the hotel chain.

Selling it to me.

I am fully convinced it is the right thing for him to do, for his family, for everyone’s future. Thomas is getting on now, early sixties for some is not a bad age at all, but for him, it seems the years have taken quite their toll.

This isn’t a completely altruistic act of course, I can’t claim otherwise, you don’t become a billionaire by making bad decisions that don’t have some sort of gain for your company. As it is, acquiring the hotels will give me a bigger real estate presence downtown, and allow me to bulk up my portfolio, considerably so.

“I just don’t see it,” Thomas begins to say before he shakes his head instead of continuing.

I switch to the next slide showing a graph of his previous year’s earnings compared to a graph indicating the projected next ten years of growth. Without any reasonable infusion of money, by my calculations things are going to drop significantly. I tell the room this and again Thomas shakes his head.

“None of this is going to convince me, Mason,” he snaps. “I’ve told you, you can stay this weekend and try to change my mind all you want, but it’s not going to happen. I want to keep this business—”

I cut him off. “— for your family’s future. I know, Thomas. That’s why I’m trying to help you out here, don’t you see that?”

“All I see,” Thomas says as he looks around, “is you trying to swoop in here and take my business away from me. I built this place up from nothing, all on my own. And look what I’ve achieved. What kind of message is it sending to my family if I just walk away now?”

“You aren’t walking away, Thomas. You’ll be keeping stocks, you’ll be getting an amazing purchase price on top of that. You still win from this, without having to put in all the work to keep it running.” This I have told him all before, but again I lay out the groundwork to see if he will follow it.

Thomas stands up, the chair squeaking loudly as he does so. He brings his hands down on the desk, fingers splayed. “But I want to keep it running, Mason. That’s the point. I don’t trust anyone else to run my business. I’m sure you wouldn’t trust anyone else to run yours.”

I raise my hands, palms up. “Thomas, we’ve known each other a long time. We’ve done some great deals in the past, helped each other out. I’d like to think we both learned a great amount of life experience from one another.”

Thomas nods slowly. “I’ll give you that, Mason.”

“Then you know I have no ill will. You know that we both want to do whats best for our own companies. I’m trying to do the best for mine and yours. Because we’ve known each other for so long.”

“I think you should listen to Mr. Lockwood,” one of the lawyers says.

Thomas gazes back at him. “Can it, Mike,” he tells him before directing his gaze back to me. “What makes you think you know how best to run my company, Mason? What’s best for it?”

I sit down on the edge of the table opposite them. “Thomas, we’re both businessmen. You’ve been very successful, I’ve been very successful. Over the years, have I not been open to your input? Taken your advice? As you once were open to taking mine. So why are you hesitating now.”

Thomas sits back in his chair. “Because this is family—” he begins.

“Sure, family,” I interrupt. “You just want to do what is best for your family, like I said, I understand that. But what I’m offering is so much better, Thomas. There is so much more money involved here in this deal, if only you would just sell.”

Before I can even finish closing my mouth after speaking, Thomas has shot back up out of his chair again. “So you know what’s best for my family? The generations to come?”

I think before I answer. “Yes,” I say, almost defiantly. “From a business standpoint, Thomas. I’ve shown you the data, I’ve tried to reason this out. If your reservation is for your family’s future, then I implore you to realize that in the future your business is not going to be worth as much as it is right now. I’m talking a decade, Thomas.”

Thomas sits again and pours himself a glass of water from the jug on the table. He knocks it back as if he were taking a shot of whiskey and at once I can detect a shift in the room’s atmosphere.

Finally, Thomas speaks and his voice is quiet and reserved. “Mason, I just want something to leave when I’m gone, something that will stay in my family’s name in the times to come. A milestone to show the Bradley lineage that originally came from nothing, do you understand?”

One of the suits, the adviser, whose name I can’t even remember, sits forward and pushes a stack of paperwork next to Thomas. From the printed logo on the top page I recognize it as the written version of the deal I’m outlining. Thomas simply stares at it, then he begins to drum his fingers on the paper.

The feeling of his sentimentality radiates across the room, hangs in the air. I truly understand where Thomas is coming from, his worries, but I wish he could see that this deal I’ve been offering to him would go far and beyond what his own plans for the future entail.

I allow myself to sit down as I watch the men across the table. The lawyers have taken the paperwork and are discussing it among themselves, the adviser leaning in occasionally take part in the whispered conversation. I ignore them though, they are already on my side and probably were from the moment I first made the offer on the business just two days ago.

It is Thomas who I watch: he sits still in his chair, his hands together, fingers steepled, brow furrowed, his eyes gazing down at the tabletop. I can only imagine the inner turmoil he must be experiencing — the weight of the decision is surely heavy on him.

But he won’t give in, will he? The realization echoes through my mind. He is blinded by that responsibility to his successors, his future family. His lineage.

The thought spurs me to speak. “What about, Stacy?”

Thomas looks up from his thoughts, right into my eyes. “What about her?” he asks quietly.

I sense his caution. “Well, what I mean is, she is your only offspring. Are you sure she is even interested in continuing on with this place, once you are gone?”

“Jesus, Mason,” Thomas snaps. “I know you’re desperate for the deal, but do you have to drop this low.”

“Have I, though? Thomas, you were the one that mentioned your lineage, the future of your family. Stacy is all you have; if she isn’t interested in continuing on with the business, then what will happen to it?”

“She is interested,” Thomas says so flatly it is clear he barely believes it, if at all.

I lean forward across the desk. “And if she isn’t? What if she wants to go her own way instead of yours? I think I know Stace well enough to be sure she isn’t —”

“Don’t tell me what my daughter wants,” Thomas says loud enough to echo around us. The lawyers, ever so interested in the paperwork until now, suddenly look up and gaze the space between Thomas and myself, their eyes alert with caution.

“Stacy is her own woman now, Thomas, what she chooses—”

Thomas stands up, almost throwing his chair back in a single motion. “— I know what’s best for my own daughter.”

The adviser stands and says as peacefully as he can, “Thomas,” but chokes off when his boss throws him the coldest of stares.

“Dan.” Thomas simply says and the adviser slinks back into his chair and tries to disappear from sight.

I stand to meet Thomas’ gaze and try to imagine what the view must be like for the others in the room — myself and Thomas staring each other down from opposite sides of the table. “Listen,” I say as neutral as I can. “I’m just trying to show you that if Stace isn’t interested in running the business—”

“— Mason.”

“— then it would be better to sell now than later, Thomas. Err on the side of caution, retain something from all of this rather than walk away with just a sale ten years from now, from some company that will only pay out what they consider it to be worth.”

He doesn’t reply. Instead, Thomas gathers the papers before him and turns to leave, motioning quickly with his hand toward the others and they too hurriedly bundle their belongings together and head toward the exit.

“Thomas—” I begin to say.

He stops as he is about to step through the doorway into the hall beyond. “Mason, it’s six a.m, I haven’t eaten and I’m not going to put it off any longer just to hear about a deal I’m not interested in. You’ll have my final word on Monday morning, once I have my own lawyers straightened out on this.”

I momentarily glance behind Thomas to see his lawyers — and poor Dan — fluster among themselves, and I can only imagine the next few days of negotiations they will have to endure on their side if they want this thing to go through for their best interests.

“You can stay through the weekend,” Thomas says as he leaves, closing the door behind him.

Alone in the meeting room, the sudden silence is deafening. I sit down again in my chair. Well, that went as about as expected, I think honestly.

Or had it? That change in the room that I felt, I’m more inclined to believe that things have somehow gone for the better regarding this negotiation.

I get up and start removing the projector cables from my laptop, the automatic slideshow still running is no use to me now. Perhaps I had been wrong to push the angle regarding Stacy. Still, it was true what I had said to Thomas, it was indeed himself that focused on his family lineage as the reason to go against the sale.

Thomas is being blinded by his sentimentally, the tunnel vision stalling our negotiations spawned from that. There was no way Stacy would want to continue on with the business, I’m sure. It’s just not her style. Her interests lay elsewhere, away from the business world — this is not a life she wants to lead, if I am reading her correctly. Stacy’s mind is to a creative bent and I am continually disappointed that Thomas has failed to recognize this in his daughter. Or he just doesn’t want to believe it.

He wants a family of business people, is the conclusion I arrive at in my thoughts.

Stacy…

She has been on my mind all morning. The thought of her is beginning to creep in. When I awoke in my bed the first image I saw was of her face — then her body. Even during the meeting, I had caught myself drifting for seconds at a time, right in the middle of explaining the charts on the slideshow her image had materialized in my mind’s eye.

Even when I was talking to Thomas. The guilt from this just somehow sweetened the thought and no more. Thomas had told me not to tell him his daughter’s wants, but ironically I’m the one that all too well knows what she wants. What she craves.

Either way, I’m stuck here at the hotel until the weekend is over, another wannabe punishment handed down by Thomas; he knows I won’t cave, that I won’t leave even if I can, that I will wait for his formal reply on the sale.

But that is fine, let him play his games. If I am anything, I’m a patient man and I won’t allow anyone to play me. And it’s not like I don’t have any entertainment to keep me busy for the next couple of days.

I have already decided that I’m going to give Stacy Bradley a weekend she will remember forever. If only for her own good, her own entertainment; even to just get the thought of her out of my mind once its all over, so I can get out of here and back to real business. After all, there is nothing wrong with giving someone everything that they’ve always wanted.

It’s Saturday morning and I recall that Stacy told me she would be starting work at 7 a.m. I sit back in my chair and throw my feet up on the one next to it, a smile of temptation washes over me.

I reach into my jacket pocket and pull out my phone.