Within a week, the financial infrastructure that Ethan had believed was the product of his own vision and effort and charm—and which had been, in substantial part, a structure built on the quiet, invisible foundation of his ex-wife’s father’s network—had revealed itself to be load-bearing in ways he had never examined.
He spent those days in a cascade of increasingly difficult phone calls. He called investors who were warm two weeks ago and found them cool, then cold, then unavailable. He called his underwriter and was told the situation required reassessment. He called a lawyer—a different lawyer from the one at Harrison & Cole—and was told that there was nothing legally actionable about a private equity firm withdrawing from an informal network of relationships. He called three people who had previously seemed like friends and found that they shared with the investors a sudden pressure on their schedules.