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big mistake, Malcolm.”
    “You’ve said that, Maxine.”
    “No, I said I won’t wait forever for Kendall to get its act together. I know you’re still juggling a lot of balls, but if you’re holding on out of some sense of loyalty or duty to Sebastian your loyalties are sorely misplaced. He will be dead in weeks. We both know it. A bad deal, but shit happens.”
    “Your sympathy is touching.”
    At forty-three, Bolelli, raised in a family with five brothers, did not shy away from competition or confrontation, and she did not mince words. Since Hugh Galaxy and the board had named Bolelli CEO, Galaxy’s annual revenues had grown to $3.2 billion, putting the company in position to finally challenge Titan for toy world supremacy. Acquiring Kendall Toys, which had a strong action figure department—something Galaxy had never been able to sustain—would be the final step in her quest, and Bolelli wasn’t about to let Malcolm Fitzgerald keep Galaxy from its rightfulplace at the top.
    “The two of us never much liked each other in life. Death isn’t about to change that. Your obligation is to your shareholders.”
    “The board has made this decision in the best interests of our shareholders.”
    “How can you say that?” Bolelli did not try to hide her exasperation. She shifted her gaze to the two people sitting across from her: Brandon Craft, Galaxy’s president, and its chief financial officer, Elizabeth Meyers. “Your third-quarter numbers look like a train wreck.”
    “A blip on the radar.”
    “That blip has been present since Sebastian announced his retirement.”
    “The board isn’t interested, Maxine.”
    “The offer is off the table when we finish this conversation, Malcolm. Don’t bother to call me back.”
    “What about lunch next time you’re in town?”
    Bolelli hung up, pushed away from the table, and paced the blue carpet in her bare feet. She’d had the office decorated completely in robin’s-egg blue, from the carpeting to the upholstered chairs and the leather couch. She also frequently wore the color. It wasn’t her favorite, but robin’s-egg blue was the distinctive color associated with Baby Betty, the doll that had put Galaxy on the map and sustained it for more than half a century. Bolelli had been Baby Betty’s nanny since Galaxy lured Bolelli from a rival toy company, and even after her promotion, Bolelli refused to hand off the doll, trusting Galaxy’s meal ticket to no one else.
    “How could they reject it?” Craft asked.
    “I don’t know how,” Bolelli said. “I don’t know why. But that arrogant bastard just told me to shove thirty-five million dollars up my ass.”
    “How do you want to play it?” Craft asked.
    Bolelli considered her options but not for long. “Get on the phone with our contacts in the media and on Wall Street. Let’s see how he likes it when his shareholders are screaming for his head on a platter.”
    “How much do you want to give away?” Meyers asked, referring to the Scottsdale negotiations.
    “Everything. I want Kendall’s shareholders to know how reasonable we’ve been and how unreasonable he’s been. I want him crawling back, begging me to make him an offer.”
    “We’ll be putting Titan on notice of the negotiations,” Craft said, tentative.
    “You don’t think Ian knows everything already?” She referred to Titan CEO Ian Hansen. “I can’t go to the bathroom around here without him hearing the toilet flush in Chicago. I’m not worried about Titan. They don’t have the cash reserves to make this kind of offer, and if Fitzgerald would turn down the offer I just made him, no way he’d take less. I’m more interested in how a man watching a century-old company disintegrate while he stands at the helm could say no to millions of dollars and sound like Christmas came three months early at the same time.” She looked out the windows at a plane on a flight path toward Phoenix Airport. “He has to have something in his back