Chapter 15 Cass

The entire ride home on the subway, I stared off into space and replayed my conversation with Marcus in the data room. Disappointment melded with an odd sense of relief as I revisited the scene again and again, the details clear and the words permanent. The disappointment came from our mutual decision to just be friends. The relief came from the fact that this wasn't just a drunken escapade—like most of my hookups were.

Those two feelings, disappointment and relief, simply didn't complement each other. The relief fed my disappointment, which gnawed on it like a parasite. The only way I could quash this disappointment was to quash the relief—and that meant I had to get over Marcus.

That should have been easy. After all, I spent approximately ten years in enmity with him. The last two weeks had been nothing short of catastrophic. Just seventy-two hours ago, we were arguing on a New York City street. And sure, every single New Yorker did that at some point in their life, but that still didn't make it pleasant. I should have had no trouble whatsoever getting over this guy—this quiet, Apple Watch wearing, too-rich-for-his-own-good, bad at accounting, condescending guy.

It wasn't easy though. At all. And as I walked out of the subway and sped back to my shitty apartment, all I could think about was that I missed him. I'd just spent the last ten or eleven hours a mere six inches away from him at all times, and still I wanted to know exactly what he was doing—and if he was thinking about me while he did it.

Bethany was out when I got home, so I spent a few minutes making myself dinner in an attempt to keep my mind busy. That didn't work, so I followed up dinner with a coldish shower and put on The Exorcist , which was easily one of the least sexy films of all time (second only to the Twilight film New Moon —and I would be willing to argue that until my dying breath).

But not even The Exorcist could distract me from Marcus fucking Fitz. He owned my brain, and I had a sneaking suspicion he knew it too. That was when I concluded it was time to completely revisit my strategy. If I couldn't ignore him, I was going to indulge in him.

I paused the film and I went to my bedroom. I flopped onto my bed, took out my laptop, and I typed Marcus's name into Google. The first thing that popped up was his Wikipedia article.

Briefly, I hovered over the link and considered just how surreal of a scenario this was—that a guy who made me come in a nightclub bathroom had a legitimate Wikipedia article, complete with "Early Life," "Career," and "Personal Life," sections.

Under the "Personal Life" section, the page read:

Fitz is an outspoken advocate for addressing the negative stigmatization of mental health supports and is a proponent of therapy. According to Fitz, "Going to therapy was the only thing that got me through the first years of being a founder. I talk to my therapist once a week and it's always the best use of my time." In 2015, he made a $500,000 donation to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and was the keynote speaker at their annual gala.

In 2018, Fitz received an honorary degree from Princeton University.

Fitz has two rescue pets: a corgi mix named Frank after the entertainer Frank Sinatra and a domestic shorthair cat called Sammy, named after the entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. Both pets were adopted from the Animal Care Centers of NYC and Fitz made a $25,000 donation to the shelter on each occasion.

I had researched enough hot celebrity guys to know that if Marcus had a girlfriend, it would have been listed on his Wikipedia page. I was also no stranger to the "Personal Life" section. Sometimes, the only reason I even searched for someone on Wikipedia was to read the "Personal Life" section. Marcus had one of the cleanest, most straightlaced, borderline dull "Personal Life" sections I had ever read.

Most of his Google results were along the same lines. If they weren't about his net worth and his work at Libra, they were about the fact that he was a bona fide angel put on this earth to shame the rest of us for not living better lives. There was even an article in Men's Health about his morning workout routine, which apparently involved ten minutes of meditation.

It wasn't until I hit the second page of results that I came across a Vanity Fair article I read a few years ago. The article was called "If You Give a Kid a Company…" and the tag read, When Lex Larson and Marcus Fitz emerged on the scene, they were hailed as wunderkinds that would turn the fintech industry on its head. Three years and tens of millions of funding dollars later, the chaos at their company Libra is finally starting to surface. And it's not pretty.

The article went on to track the bedlam taking place at Libra seven or eight years ago. It was chock full of salacious accounts about the two founders (then both underage) allegedly throwing wild parties at the office, engaging in behaviors that would make any HR professional's stomach churn, and blowing through money faster than a group of suburban dads at Best Buy on Black Friday.

When I first read this article, I was still in college and pure schadenfreude made it one of my favorite pieces of journalism of all time. A sizable section of the article detailed how Marcus once showed up to a staff meeting so hungover that he ordered a thousand dollars' worth of French fries and chicken tenders from his phone at nine in the morning, forgetting that Libra's Board Chair would be stopping by. When the Chair walked into the office, he was greeted with mountains of fries and boxes of Franzia. Apparently Marcus had even removed one of the bags of Franzia from the box and was drinking it straight from the spigot while he tried to go over quarterly production targets with the staff. The Chair was so appalled that he walked out of the office. Marcus chased after him—bag of wine still in hand—and tripped, splattered wine all over the office, and ended up on the floor in a puddle of pinot, laughing his ass off. He then apparently proceeded to fall asleep in the puddle of wine, until two staff members sobered up enough to carry him to the couch in his office.

As I reread the article, I wondered if that was the same couch where we sat when Marcus had his hands on my body just a couple of hours ago.

I closed the tab with the Vanity Fair article and stared up at my ceiling, where a massive crack ran right through the middle of it, fanning out from my overhead light. I traced the shape of the crack, although I had stared at it enough to have every inch of it memorized. It showed up one day a few months ago, no explanation. I spotted it while I was lying on my back, legs spread around this guy I brought home from Shelf Atlas. As I glared at it, all I could think about was whether my landlord would withhold my deposit over it. I was so distracted, I pretended to come so I could just kick this guy out and fixate on the crack without interruption.

Money was the reason I was stuck in my job, which meant money was the reason why Marcus and I couldn't be together. I hated money. Passionately. I didn't have the privilege of feeling any other way about it anymore. It was a cruel puzzle—the one thing I needed and the one thing I just couldn't seem to make enough of. Everything else came easy to me—but not money. It wasn't easy for most of us, after all.

With a sigh, I flipped open the top of my laptop once more, where my Google search for Marcus remained. There on the sidebar, underneath a picture of him, were twenty-five typed characters I could barely stomach: Net Worth: US$156 million.

***

On Tuesday, Marcus spent most of the morning in meetings with staff, so I had our conference room to myself. His absence was notable; the room felt incomplete without him there. I missed the smell of his coffee and his cologne. I missed the warmth of his body when he sat in the chair next to mine as we worked together on my laptop. Most of all, I missed those fleeting looks he gave me when he thought I wasn't looking—a reminder that no matter how much either of us tried to fight it, we were hardwired to want each other.

I kept busy by finalizing more of the mandatory checklists and verifying that we had what we needed for the accountants to initiate their portion of the audit. I had accounted for most of the documents, which had been relatively seamless thanks to Marcus's impeccable record keeping. I did, however, have a few more ledgers to review before I could set the accountants loose.

Around lunchtime, Marcus wrapped up his staff meetings and headed back to the conference room. The sight of him strolling in my direction incited a full-body reaction. It was like every nerve ending in me awoke and was sending anticipatory tingles over my skin. My body seemed to recognize him— Oh that guy? That guy who redefined pleasure for us? Yeah, we fucking worship him.

When he entered the conference room, he nodded his chin at me. "Hey," he said, his tone casual. "Long time no see."

"How's your day going?" I asked, striving to match his tone. I lowered the screen of my laptop to look at him. Today, he was wearing an eggplant-colored cardigan over a white t-shirt, and once again I was struck by the fact that I thought a cardigan looked unbearably attractive for the first time ever.

"So busy," he muttered. As he fell into his usual seat, he peeled back the wrapper on a Clif bar and took a huge bite. "I completely dropped the ball on setting up performance reviews, so now I'm scrambling to try to get those on the calendar. Of course, my assistant just pretended to forget as well—probably because he doesn't want to do it…" Marcus trailed off as he turned and looked out the window. "Sorry," he said as he shook his head. "I'm rambling."

"No, you're not. I actually like hearing about how you manage your people."

He turned his eyes on me and flicked his eyebrows up as he continued to chew. "Really?"

I nodded honestly. "Most founders are hands off when it comes to people ops. They can be disconnected, in my opinion."

Marcus was nodding vigorously as well. "That's what I was going for." He took another bite of his bar. "I didn't want to lose track of my people. I'm very…" He gestured with his hands as he chewed. "I don't know. I prefer the one-on-one conversations. I connect with people better that way—way better than I do when I'm leading big staff meetings and things like that."

"So, did you get those scheduled?"

"Yep. I'm underwater now though." His tone wavered, like he was remembering just how much he still had left to do today. "Did you finish the ledgers?"

"I did, actually."

"And how did it go?" he asked. Another bite. "Everything in order?"

An instinct to avoid causing him any distress arose in me—and it was an instinct I had never experienced in the past. I paused before I said, "Probably."

As soon as I hesitated, Marcus put down his half-eaten Clif bar and sat up straight in his seat. His eyes flickered, on the verge of narrowing. But as usual, he was able to compose himself in just a few seconds. "What the hell does that mean?"

"What?"

"‘Probably.'" Marcus canted his head. "What does that mean?"

"You're asking me to define the word ‘probably?'" I inquired, hoping to keep the situation light.

Unfortunately, it didn't work, which was unsurprising. There was no levity when it came to Marcus and his company. He shook his head. "No, I'm asking you to tell me why you said it that way."

"What way?"

"All—" Marcus waved his hand. "All doubtful. Something's wrong, right? What's wrong?"

Reluctantly, I held up both hands in an attempt to remind him that this was just a theory and by no means a fire drill. "I don't know. I told you, it's probably fine. I'm not an auditor—"

"But you have a background in financial management and accounting, so I'm inclined to listen to anything you say. What's wrong with my ledgers?"

His words stoked an ember in me, which caught me off guard. Marcus's unparalleled competence grew steadily sexier to me with each day. But hearing him express a deep respect for my own competence—I could have straddled his lap and ridden an orgasm out of both of us right then and there.

Mildly flustered, I stood, pushing my chair back from the table in the process. I walked around the table to the other side, where he followed me with his gaze. When I was next to him, I placed my laptop in front of him and bowed low so I could point to my screen.

As I leaned over his shoulder, he glanced to the side. My cheek was just a couple of inches from his face. I wasn't positive, but I thought I caught him inhaling softly.

"See this?" I asked, gesturing to one of the ledgers.

Marcus redirected his attention to my laptop. "What about it?"

"This is the first of several recurring deposits to your main account, tagged under general funds."

"And that's bad?"

"Well, what are general funds?" I responded, forcing myself to speak slowly so as not to raise alarm bells. "Is that accounts receivable? Is that in-kind? Is it a gift? I have no idea. I just know that's ambiguous."

He frowned at the screen as he leaned closer, almost as though that would make the origin of the funds clearer.

"Do you have the receipts for these transactions?" I continued. "If we could track down the transactions, we might have all the answers we need."

"Maybe," he murmured. He raised his hand to his chin and drummed his index and middle fingers against his jawline—a gesture I now recognized as a sign he was concocting a process in his head. "I'll need transactions and also outgoing expenses, which could tell me how we spent this money and if there was any earmarking. I'll get Eli to help me check it out."

"It's a lot of money," I pointed out, careful to keep my words measured. "Altogether, the grand total of these installments is in the tens of millions."

"I'm sorry, what ?"

"It's around twenty-million," I repeated. "You've really never noticed this?"

As he shook his head, the frown set into his face even further. His hand tightened into a fist—involuntarily, I assumed. "No, I hired a CFO so I would never have to."

"Hm." I stood up straight. My hand danced at my side, tempted to rest on his shoulder. It was a masterclass in restraint. "Well, I can email you the dates for the ledgers that include this kind of transaction and maybe you can talk it out with your CFO. Morgan, right?"

He nodded in confirmation. "Do you think the auditors will flag it?"

"Depends on the auditor sometimes. I would say the chances are probably somewhere in the middle."

"Damn it," he muttered. He leaned forward and put his face into his hands. He held that position for a few counts before he sat up and clenched his fist gently once.

"Hey." I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder, abandoning restraint in the process. "Can I do anything for you?"

Soundlessly, Marcus nodded. "Sorry. I'm just…I'm under a lot of pressure right now."

"I know." I squeezed his shoulder. "But for the record, this is a clean due diligence process so far. Nothing to panic over."

He breathed out slowly as he nodded his head. When he looked up at me, his expression shifted from anguish to relief. "Thanks," he said after a beat. "I want it to stay that way."

Just as I was about to assure him it would, the glass door to the conference room flung open and Alex strolled in. Immediately, Marcus and I both flinched and practically sprang apart. Marcus rolled his chair a foot away from the table, and I slid towards the brick wall.

"You two okay?" Alex asked, looking between us. "You both look terrified."

"Fine," Marcus interjected, speaking before I could. "I'm fine. We're just working on some file renaming."

Marcus lied so well, it took me a moment to even realize that what he said wasn't true. Then I was left wondering why he would bother to lie about what we were doing, especially to his best friend of ten years—and the CEO of Libra.

"Fun," Alex replied in that scratchy, lusty voice he always used. His response was so disingenuous that I wasn't even sure why he said it. But then he turned to me, raised both eyebrows, and said, "Cassie, you're coming to my birthday party, right? It's on Saturday. It's going to be amazing."

Immediately, I knew he was hitting on me. I'd had enough experience with these too-handsome, too-rich guys—the kind who abandoned the idea of having a real personality because they had too much money and too many abs to need one.

"I didn't realize you were having a party." Momentarily, I looked over at Marcus, who was staring blankly at Alex as he leaned back in his chair with his arms folded. I turned my attention back to Alex. "Am I invited?"

"Absolutely," Alex confirmed in faux disbelief that I didn't know already. "I could have sworn I told Marcus to ask if you were free."

"Slipped my mind," Marcus chimed in, his tone flat. "My bad."

"This guy," Alex remarked with a grin. He nodded his head in Marcus's direction, but he was still smiling at me—leering, almost. "Don't you love how serious he is? Marcus fucking Fitz."

"I do," I responded, not missing a beat. "I love it."

As soon as I spoke, Marcus cocked an eyebrow in surprise. He shifted in his seat, sitting up straighter—and with a hint of a smile on his lips. That minute flash of joy shot to the top of the endless list of things about Marcus that I found unfathomably adorable.

Naturally, Alex was too busy typing on his phone to notice. After a beat, he handed his phone to me. "Put your number in. I'll text you all the info."

I took Alex's phone and put my info into his contacts. The entire time, I could feel Marcus staring at me outright.

"Perfect." Alex took back his phone and began to type. Seconds later, my phone lit up at the other end of the table. "I just texted you my number, so now you have it."

"That's great."

"Definitely." He backed towards the door. "Well, I can let you both get back to all the fun in here. Marcus, do you want to do the call in my office?"

"What call?" Marcus furrowed his brow. "We have a call?"

"Yeah, with Lilac," Alex said. "Remember? It's in half an hour."

"Shit," he gritted out. "I totally forgot about that." Marcus did that thing where he inhaled and exhaled before clenching his fist. "Yeah, I'll be there. See you in thirty."

"See you in thirty." Alex stepped out of the room. "Later, Cassie."

As soon as the door closed and Alex was out of earshot, Marcus turned to look at me and let out a sigh. His handsome face shifted from annoyance back to neutral in a matter of seconds. "Did you enjoy that?"

"Enjoy what?" I returned to my seat with my laptop.

"That whole show." Marcus cocked his head in the direction of Alex's office. "I'm so glad he has your number now, by the way. It's really a dream come true for me."

"I thought you were my friend. Shouldn't you be happy that a hot millionaire wants me?" I teased.

His nostrils actually flared. "He's not good enough for you," Marcus stated. He picked up his Clif bar again and he took a bite. "At all."

"Why not?"

"Because he's a fuckboy with an American Express Black Card who has an Amazon ‘subscribe and save' auto-order for lube," he responded, no hesitation.

"Isn't he your best friend?"

Marcus glanced up at me briefly before he looked back down at the Clif bar in his hand. "Cassie, can you send me that list of ledgers? I want to go over them with a fine-tooth comb. It'll be late tonight, unfortunately. I've got to do a call with our PR firm now."

"Of course. I'll send it to you."

"Thanks," Marcus said before he tossed his bar on the table. "I don't know why I'm eating that. I hate Clif bars."

"Have you eaten lunch?"

With a grimace, he shook his head. "No time. I wanted to grab something, but—"

"I've got it," I offered as I stood, not waiting for his permission. "I was going to run out anyway."

Marcus's shoulders immediately relaxed, like I had just offered to do his taxes for him, rather than simply buy him lunch. "Really? Because that would be so helpful to me right now."

I nodded. "What do you want? Anything in particular? Any allergies?"

"None. Wait, Cassie—seriously, thank you ."

A shrug. "Relax. I'm probably just going to walk over to Panera. It's not a big deal."

He shook his head far longer than he needed to—and I could instantly recognize that somehow, this actually was a big deal to him. That revelation dug into a deep part of my chest—that part that wanted to know everything about this guy.

"Yeah," he said after a beat. "Sorry. I'm coming off weird right now, I know. I'm just grateful. I'm not used to anyone taking care of me."

"It's what friends are for." When I said the word "friends," I emphasized it. With a wink, I took my coat off the back of my chair. "I'll be back soon."

At the door I paused and I looked back. There, I saw that Marcus was staring at me through the glass, a small smile sitting at the corner of his lips.