Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WHO OWNED THE NAME
Ellison House was worth approximately forty-six million dollars.
At least, that was the valuation investors had discussed during our last expansion meeting.
We operated boutique hotels.
Private dining venues.
Luxury event spaces.
And a hospitality consulting division serving clients across the Midwest.
Ronan liked to call it his company.
He liked photographs of himself standing beneath our logo.
He liked interviews where reporters described him as a visionary.
He liked saying he'd built everything from nothing.
But the truth was more complicated.
Ellison House had begun with my grandmother's restaurant.
A small brick building in Evanston.
Twelve tables.
A kitchen barely large enough for three cooks.
My grandmother, Eleanor Ellison, had spent forty years feeding people there.
When she died, she left the property to me.
I was twenty-six.
Ronan was my boyfriend.
He had ideas.
I had the building.
The family name.
And the initial capital.
We built the business together.
But when the company expanded, the original ownership structure remained.
I held sixty-two percent of the voting shares.
Ronan held twenty-eight.
The remaining ten percent belonged to early investors.
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He knew that.
He simply behaved as though nobody else did.
