Chapter 5 - THE APARTMENT
The apartment became another fight.
Purchase price:
$1.85 million.
Claire contributed:
$310,000 down payment and renovation funds.
Daniel contributed:
$390,000.
Mortgage covered the rest.
Ownership:
45/55.
Clear.
Then renovation invoices showed another detail.
Reed Digital had reimbursed Daniel:
$92,000
for a home-office buildout and executive meeting space.
Legitimate business expense?
Partly.
The company used the apartment for:
investor dinners,
remote product meetings,
executive off-sites.
But $31,000 of the reimbursement covered improvements Claire considered personal:
lighting,
custom millwork,
audio system.
The board later required Daniel to repay:
$27,500.
The home-office review expanded beyond the $92,000 reimbursement.
Reed Digital had a policy allowing founders to expense business-use portions of residential improvements when the company lacked sufficient office space during a relocation.
Daniel qualified.
The auditor supported:
built-in conferencing hardware,
network cabling,
acoustic treatment,
and dedicated office cabinetry.
It rejected:
designer lighting in the dining area,
part of the custom bar,
and decorative millwork.
Claire had personally selected some of those items.
She had not known the company reimbursed them.
That irritated her.
Daniel said:
“I thought it was efficient.”
Claire answered:
“That sentence should be banned from your vocabulary.”
He almost smiled.
She did not.
Efficiency had become Daniel’s favorite moral solvent.
If one arrangement solved three problems, he stopped asking whether the boundaries were appropriate.
Not because of Ethan.
Because founder expenses were poorly controlled.
Claire saw the pattern.
Daniel blurred boundaries when he believed the result made sense.
Relationship.
Home.
Company.
May you like
Financing.
He disliked conflict enough to let categories merge until nobody knew what belonged where.
