Chapter 5 – The Springfield Deal

The Springfield expansion, the company’s most ambitious project in a decade, collapsed within the week, the financing evaporating the moment the bank recalculated its risk exposure without Diana’s guarantee attached.

Suppliers, spooked by the sudden credit uncertainty, began requiring upfront payment on new inventory rather than the standard floor-plan terms the dealership had relied on for over a decade, straining cash flow across all seven existing locations almost immediately.

Sienna, whose entire public introduction to the company had been built around the Springfield expansion as her signature project, found herself managing a crisis instead of a launch, fielding panicked calls from a leadership team that increasingly understood how little of the actual company’s foundation Walter had ever controlled personally.

“I didn’t know it was all backed by her,” Sienna admitted to a colleague, during a hallway conversation Diana happened to overhear during a visit to collect personal items from the corporate office. “I thought Walter owned this outright.”

“Most people did,” Diana said, stepping into view, unbothered by being overheard. “That was rather the point of putting his name on the sign, I imagine.”

Sienna had no response, her earlier confidence about the “new chapter” she’d been promised looking considerably less certain with each passing day of the unfolding financial collapse.