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silent, staring at her hands in her lap. Tom watched her with a concerned face.
    “Well?” Adam said, glancing back and forth between Amelia and Tom.
    “Isn’t it? Isn’t it amazing?” he said.
    Without lifting his gaze from Amelia, Tom said, “I’d like to hear what Amelia’s thinking.”
    Amelia looked up. Her eyes were heavy. She sighed. “I know it’s probably a great deal, and God knows it would make Adam’s and my life a lot easier.” She was afraid to look at her brother. She’d already turned down so much money and she knew he wasn’t going to like what she was about to say. “But something about it doesn’t feel right.” She swallowed, glancing back down at her hands. “I mean, we’ve got so much more to do on the programming end and there are so many more things we’ve yet to discover or develop. And I guess we could do that under another owner, but I don’t know … it’s just … it’s our first company, and I guess I’m kind of attached. I’m not ready to give it away to someone else.” Tom’s mouth had spread into a closed mouth smile. Adam’s eyes were darting back and forth from Tom to Amelia, trying to understand how the hell this could be happening. Eight and a half million and they wanted to
turn it down
?
    He looked at T. J. for help. “T. J., come on. Weigh on in this, please.
    It’s a killer offer, right?”
    Tom glanced nervously at T. J. He knew how much influence T.J. had over Adam and was worried that whatever was about to come out of his mouth would pit Adam even more firmly against his sister.
    T. J. cleared his throat. “I think Amelia is right. It’s too early to let the company go. You don’t know anything about these investors or their motives. Besides, from a purely monetary perspective, if Doreye is worth eight and a half million today, with Amelia still cracking on more codes and applications, it’ll be worth a whole lot more than that in a year, maybe even in a few months.”
    Tom turned his head slightly in surprised delight. Adam looked down at the table. “Well, yeah, I guess that’s true. I mean, about the increasing value.”
    “Besides,” T. J. said, “you should always keep one offer in your pocket, right? For leverage against the next. Imagine if YouTube or Facebook had settled for their first offers. They’d never have gotten as far as they did.” Amelia looked up at T. J. and smiled. She didn’t love his logic, but she was glad to have his support.
    “So, we’re all okay with telling them no?” Tom looked around the room.
    “It isn’t time,” Amelia said. T. J. and Adam (albeit reluctantly) nodded.
    Tom clapped his hands. “Great. I think it’s the right decision. It also means we all know that this company is at a new level now. You don’t turn down eight and a half million dollars and start sitting on your haunches.
    Things are about to get exciting, guys.”
    “Tom, while we’re all here, maybe we should start talking about next steps for the team. It feels like we might be ready to hire some help for Amelia. I think Adam and I should start focusing on the sales strategy. I put together a deck for how I think we can approach it.” T. J. reached into his satchel and pulled out the pitch deck he’d put together for his father, ripping off the last page with the org chart before sliding it across the table to Tom.
    Tom flipped through the document. “Where’d you get these figures?
    They look really good.”
    T. J. blushed. “I’ve been doing some outside research. I wanted to get a handle on the total market size. I’ve also been researching potential vendor partnerships. If Amelia feels ready, we can start reaching out to vendors to get contracts on board for when the product launches.” Tom looked up from the deck. “Excellent, T. J.” He turned to Amelia.
    “Amelia, do you feel ready to start talking to vendors? And would it be helpful to bring on a developer or two to help you with code?” Amelia was taken