The first was a small chain of hotels which had been on her radar for almost five years. Although strategically placed throughout the busiest cities in the UK, dwarfed by their competitors and unable to update their antiquated facilities with the newest of technologies, she had watched as their income diminished and their buildings lost their luster. Having spent much of her honeymoon studying the reports again, less than one week after returning to the office, she made the Denholm Hotel Group an offer so lucrative, refusal was not an option. It wasn’t the first hotel chain she had turned around, and it wouldn’t be the last.

Before the end of the next week, she had done the same with a company whose primary source of income had been the manufacturing of models and toys. Tiny trains on plastic tracks and sailing ships built with glue and string were no longer on anyone’s gift lists, and although once a leader in the industry of children’s entertainment, Addison had spent the last three years watching Tattersall Toys slowly fade away. Technology was again on Addison’s side, but this time in more ways than one.

A family-owned business and on the verge of bankruptcy, Hubert Tattersall signed the contracts to sell his company the day after Kane Holdings made him the offer. Hardly one who could be called an entrepreneur, Hubert had no way of knowing that with a bit of re-tooling, and some new presses and molds, his sizable factory could once again produce something in high demand.

With its sapphire glass and constructed out of titanium, Addison’s mobile needed no other adornment and certainly not a bulky, plastic cover, but most couldn’t afford titanium. They could, however, bear the expense of the newest in polyurethane or silicone-enhanced smartphone covers, a product easily mass-produced in a factory the size of the one that used to house Tattersall Toys.

Always one to plan far beyond the takeover or purchase, Addison’s strategy for turning massive profits on both the hotels and the toy company were already in the works, but it wouldn’t be until she returned to work the following week when the deals and bartering with possible buyers would begin. That was her favorite part. The end game. The time when those who saw themselves as savvy industrialists would posture and boast, spouting numbers, trends, and distributing hastily-assembled prospectuses in hopes they could persuade Addison to lower her asking price. She would listen intently and incline her head at all the right times, but Addison knew the numbers too, and they were all in her favor. So, when she left the office late Friday afternoon, she had more energy than she knew what to do with.