Chapter 2 Marcus

"Marcus—"

"Is she finally here?" I shifted my attention from the calendar I'd pulled up on my laptop to the doorway of my office. Alex Larson had just poked his head through and was watching me with his typical expression of amusement plastered across his face.

"She's here," he confirmed, nodding.

"Fucking finally," I murmured before I took a deep breath. Inhale, exhale, clench fist, unclench . I snapped the top of my laptop closed and craned my neck to look through the window and across the office to the conference room where our guest was waiting.

Let her wait .

She was twenty minutes late. Twenty whole minutes. An entire twenty minutes of time on my calendar I could have used to plow through the hundreds of tasks on my to-do list. Tasks that included but were not limited to: finalizing the change management plan for the acquisition, reviewing the language for the inevitable press release, doing damage control with TechCrunch after Alex sent out that idiotic fucking Tweet last week, and also sending an anniversary gift to my moms.

Inhale, exhale, clench fist, unclench.

When he saw me go through my six-second reset ritual, Alex entered my office and closed the door. He folded his arms and leaned back against it in a relaxed pose he had perfected over the years via countless photoshoots for tech magazines and online write-ups. He used to be more tech bro than Tom Ford, but after our PR overhaul a few years ago that changed. Nowadays, I couldn't spend a day scrolling through Reddit without seeing some post about how Alex was the hottest CEO in the industry, typically accompanied by a picture of him in a custom suit.

Fucking ridiculous .

"You okay?"

As soon as he asked me that question, I wanted to throw my americano at him and ruin the stupid fleece vest he was wearing over his button-down shirt. Nothing about my demeanor suggested I was okay. In fact, a basic grasp of empathy and an iota of inferential skills would tell anyone I was probably on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

To be honest, it was some kind of miracle I'd never had a nervous breakdown. I was well primed for it, given everything on my plate—today and over the past ten years. But I had my six-second reset, twenty years of practice talking to a therapist (saved as my one and only favorite contact in my phone)…and a lot of CBD oil.

"Dude, relax," Alex practically ordered, his eyes traveling over my face. His tone was a mix of disbelief and condescension. Fucker . "We're about to make five hundred million dollars. You've got nothing to be upset about."

I paused, my jaw just daring to drop. He said this like Davenport-Ridgeway was about to give us a crisp check for five hundred million dollars, and we were just going to hand the company to them—like a Craigslist transaction or something. In reality, this would be an ordeal for the ages. This had been an ordeal for the ages, one I had regularly lost sleep over for the last year.

His flippancy was infuriating and frustrating all at once—typical Alex Larson. Having worked with Alex since we were eighteen years old, I probably should have been used to it. It still baffled me though. Ten years. Ten long, chaotic years. If he still needed me to explain how our finances worked, I really had to wonder what the hell we had been doing all this time.

Oh yeah. He designed an app a decade ago, and since then I had done literally everything else .

"Don't recite the terms of the deal to me. I know them. Well. But she's late," I reminded him, "and we're not dealing with chump change. This is real money. Life changing amounts of money. Being late for our first meeting doesn't exactly inspire confidence."

He shrugged. Prick. "She was late. Past tense. She's here now."

"And?" I rose from my seat and I walked over to the glass wall opposite my desk. From here, I could see all the way over the dozens of open desks in the front room, to the conference room by the door. We called that conference room the fishbowl, because two of its four walls were made of floor to ceiling glass.

Waiting in the fishbowl was a woman who was young, blond, unassuming, and late . She and I hadn't met yet, but she was about to become the bane of my existence. I knew it. Already, I could feel a lump rising in my throat at the idea of working with her. There was no way around it though. She was our due diligence analyst from Davenport-Ridgeway, the company willing to pay us that five hundred million dollars that Alex so flippantly mentioned. And if we wanted that money—that life changing amount of money—we had to get through her.

"Dibs," Alex declared as we observed the analyst.

Perturbed, I shot him a glance. I recognized that skeevy, appraising look on his face—the one women apparently found beguiling. "We're twenty-eight years old. We can't call dibs on women."

"Dibs," he repeated, grinning as he watched her.

Over in the fishbowl, the analyst smiled at her phone. This meeting was twenty-five minutes off-schedule, and either she didn't realize it or she didn't care. I hoped it was the latter. If it was the former and I was supposed to spend the next sixty days working in tandem with a fresh-out-of-college, tied-to-her-phone, trust-fund-inheriting, manic pixie dream girl, I was going to cash out all my shares and go off the grid.

Once again, she giggled at her phone and adjusted her stiff, navy pencil skirt as she crossed one leg over the other. Her posture was impeccable, I had to say. Borderline military. But I knew her type well. I could practically smell her Chanel perfume from over here. She was polished and perfect, decorated from head to toe like a Fabergé egg. And just like a Fabergé egg, that was all she'd be good for: the impression of elegance. Faultlessness. But useless, aside from that. Hollow.

I respired after a few seconds. "You can have her. Not going to fight you on that."

"Why the hell not?"

"Is she less appealing to you now that you know I don't want her?" I inquired. I posed the question but we both knew the answer was yes.

Alex pulled his lips together in a line. He didn't respond.

"She's not my type," I clarified.

"Nobody is," he countered, which—whatever. Not worth it. I did my six-second reset and decided to bite my tongue. My Monday was off to a rough start already; no need to open up old wounds with Alex.

Instead, I continued to watch this woman through the glass—this woman who summoned up the audacity to be late today. I studied her. I soaked her in, observing her mannerisms and noting the way she was delicate with her own body. When she tucked a lock of long, straight blond hair behind a pearl-adorned ear, her touch was gentle. Careful. She looked docile—boring, even. And somehow, she looked familiar to me, but I couldn't quite place her.

"So," Alex tipped his gaze in my direction. "So, are we going to keep shamelessly watching this poor girl like we're not all sitting in glass rooms, or are we going to go over there and start this meeting?"

"Give me another minute," I responded as I crossed my arms. My jaw clenched of its own volition as I let my eyes linger on her face, circling doe eyes that I felt like I would remember without pause.

I knew her. I definitely knew her. The question was how , and the opportunities were limitless. She could have applied for a job at Libra, could have come to a demo over the last decade—and frankly, it was possible she could have showed up with a gaggle of socialites at any of those coke-filled parties Alex threw so well.

After several seconds, it was no use. I had no choice but to admit defeat. I'd met way too many people to remember every face. While this one tapped the triangle, she didn't ring a bell.

"Fine. I'm ready," I announced. I rounded back to my desk and grabbed my coffee—my second one of the morning. I could already tell it was going to be a three-cup kind of day.

A few moments later, when Alex and I entered the fishbowl, the analyst didn't remove her eyes from her cell phone. In fact, she went so far as to keep typing—and smiling as she did it.

"Am I interrupting?" I questioned, forgetting to manage my tone. I didn't often forget to do that, but she was 0 for 2 this morning.

When I snapped at her, she looked up. To my surprise, her motions were swift, borderline casual. She wasn't startled; she clearly knew I was standing right there. Big brown eyes met mine. When I raised an eyebrow, she smiled at me. Perfect teeth—socialite white, as I liked to call it.

"Hi there."

Hi there?

"I'm Marcus Fitz," I said when I held out my hand to shake hers. Her hand felt bony in mine, like if I squeezed just a little harder it would make her wince.

Next to me, Alex leaned past me and extended his arm. "Lex Larson." He flashed that ten-million-dollar smile.

To her credit, the analyst didn't widen her eyes and flush pink like every other woman did when they were on the receiving end of Alex's gaze. Somehow, she managed to temper her reaction to those deep blue eyes and that chiseled face of his. She simply nodded politely and shook his hand. While this was all happening, I held back a sigh and an eye roll. It had been ten years and I still couldn't take Alex seriously when he used that stupid nickname. Lex.

"Cassandra Pierson."

I stopped suddenly when I heard her name. Realization began to dawn on me. And when I said realization "dawned on me," what I actually meant was that it punched me in the face with a set of brass knuckles. Hell, realization may as well have smashed the end off an empty beer bottle and held the jagged edge up to my neck. At once, my heart rate began to quicken and my jaw clenched, pressing my teeth into my gums.

My therapist, Dr. Jensen, referred to this as a "trigger" moment. It was a moment when some external factor managed to incite a reaction from me, typically fight or flight.

Most people had triggers, and it was worthwhile to explore them in order to prepare for them. For example, one of my triggers was public humiliation: I didn't do well with being the butt of jokes or being teased in front of other people. For some, it was no big deal. For me, it brought back childhood memories. Dark ones. Memories of omnipresent foster siblings who seemed to loathe me for no reason other than my presence.

However, thanks to self-awareness and therapy, I had trained myself to manage that reaction over the years. So now, when Alex made jokes at my expense at tech panels being streamed around the world, I knew how to take a deep breath, laugh it off, and remind myself it was all in good fun—no need to fight or take flight.

Apparently, Cassandra Pierson, or Cassie , was one of my triggers though. And that was a revelation to me. I hadn't thought about her in years—ten years, to be exact. In fact, I had strived to block her out, along with a slew of other memories from my youth that did nothing but fester.

Yet there she was—sending me on a tailspin so fast that the world was a blurry haze. Again.

"You good?" Alex asked, his hand firm on my shoulder. I realized I was glaring at Cassie, who was looking up at me with an expression of confusion steadily deepening on her face. She shifted, keeping those big brown eyes locked on mine—and she was clearly uncomfortable.

Good.

Unfortunately, words had abandoned me. Soundlessly, I nodded and pushed out a weak smile, which was enough to make her break her gaze. Cassie was in my usual seat, so I ended up taking the chair on Alex's right side, while he sat at the head of the table. It was poetic, metaphoric, significant—and annoying as hell.

Once I was sitting, I continued to stare at her, wondering what the odds of us reuniting like this could be. I was admittedly not the mathematician in this duo—that would be Alex. But one in a billion, I guessed. Maybe more.

For a moment, as Alex and I got settled with our laptops, I wondered how the hell I missed this. I may not have been the mathematician in this duo, but I was the details guy. The reliable one. The thorough one. The one who kept his pulse on everything that happened at Libra. Bottom line: I was the one who never missed a cue, and yet somehow I couldn't recognize Cassie until now.

In my defense, she had changed since we met during our freshman year of college at Princeton. She was obviously ten years older, not to mention reedier. Her blond hair was longer and darker now, a far cry from the shoulder-length bob she used to wear. It was still perfect though, which didn't surprise me.

Cassie Pierson: perfection embodied in one tiny, loathsome little package.

Despite the physical differences, what hadn't changed was my disdain for her. I could still picture that last night at school. That was the night she singlehandedly tainted every memory I had of my brief stint in college.

As we sat at that frosted glass table, on the verge of kicking off a sixty-day due diligence process, I found myself holding back passive aggressive comments like I was defending the walls of Troy. I could have easily said, Better late than never, right? Or I could have gone with, Looks like we missed the worm, right? And even though all those comments were straight out of the annoying, middle-aged, white dad phrasebook, I kind of wanted to annoy her.

But that wasn't what I did. Inhale, exhale, clench fist, unclench . "Thanks so much for coming out here, Cassandra."

My tone came out even. Normal. Even I was impressed with how well I was managing my emotions.

"Absolutely," she responded, as if she had any say in the matter. We all knew Davenport-Ridgeway sent her over here, likely in a company car, with a clear directive: Rifle through these boys' underwear drawer and find every bit of dirty laundry you can get your hands on.

"Oh wow, I'm so rude. Can we get you anything? Coffee? Tea? La Croix?" Alex asked her, gesturing to the side with his thumb.

La Croix . Good lord. This acquisition couldn't come soon enough. If I had to sit in another meeting with Alex where he offered people La Croix like he was some kind of bougie, magical, tech messiah, I was going to have to double up on therapy…or CBD oil.

"I'm fine," she assured him before she tossed her perfectly coiffed blond hair over her shoulder so it spilled over her silky white blouse. Somewhere out there, haircare companies were flipping through modeling headshots in vain, thinking they would find the perfect hair model for their products. On the contrary, I had her right here in my conference room.

She was clearly ready to get this process started and it was at that moment I realized she didn't remember me. Fucking hell—she really didn't remember me . My hand began to tighten around my coffee cup. If it had been Styrofoam or paper, I would have collapsed the cup into itself, sending hot coffee all over the three of us and the glass table. It was a real, holy-shit-you-can't-be-serious moment. And I didn't know what was more tragic: the fact she forgot about me or the fact it made me so livid that she forgot about me.

"Sorry, have we met before?" I found myself asking. Well, no. "Asking" was the wrong word for it. It was certainly not as smooth as it sounded. Instead, I ended up blurting the question out, which made both Alex and Cassie shoot identical looks of confusion in my direction.

"Possibly," she responded, cool as could be. Her voice was melodic, just like I remembered. "This is my first time here."

"Right," I confirmed, working furiously to keep my tone cordial. "But elsewhere? You're sure we've never met?"

She shook her head, smiling sweetly. "No, sorry."

"No need to apologize," I assured her. That was a lie though. I would have loved an apology from her. In fact, an apology was about the bare minimum of what I needed from her. If I had it my way, she would rent out a billboard in Times Square and plaster that apology for everyone to see for the next ten years.

"Really? Because you're staring at me like you're going to shake me down for answers."

Immediately, Alex laughed way too hard at her joke. It wasn't even funny. In fact, I wasn't exactly sure she was even making a joke. But of course, Alex laughed because that was his game. He would smile at them, cackle at their jokes, buy them a small three-thousand-dollar token of his appreciation, and then he would nail them.

"I apologize," I offered, lying again and really forcing myself to deliver with a sincere tone (or one that gave the impression of sincerity, at least). "And now I've derailed your meeting. Please, go on."

Cassie gave me another one of those perfect smiles. "No problem. Well, today is your first day of due diligence, which you should be incredibly thrilled about. I'll be here the entire time, guiding you through it and acting as your point of contact to Davenport-Ridgeway. I'll only do a minor part of the audits. My role is more around project management and liaising."

I nodded. "Got it."

"So, it sounds like we're going to be working together a lot," Alex commented. The delight in his voice was thick, like a layer of cream cheese frosting on a shitty piece of carrot cake. I didn't know how I withheld my grimace, but I did—like a goddamn pro.

She smiled. Yet again. "Well, that's up to you. For my approach, I require a singular point of contact. So, if that should be you, Lex, that's fine. But it could also be Marcus."

"Who would be better?" Alex asked. His question was a thinly veiled pick-up line, whether or not Cassie knew it.

"Between the two of you, it would be Marcus. This is a lengthy, in-depth process that is going to call upon a lot of historical and legal transactions as well as finances and personnel records. The Chief Operating Officer typically keeps those areas under their purview, and I assume you've followed that model."

I could scoff. At Libra, we'd followed that model and then some. I was the mitochondria of the company. I personally managed six employees, who in turn managed sixty-two of our company's sixty-five total employees. The only people I didn't manage directly or indirectly were Alex, his executive assistant, and myself.

"I should do it," I agreed, but it was mostly for Alex's benefit. Cassie clearly knew this was a job for me, not the guy who usually rolled in at ten in the morning with a coffee and opined vaguely about what the engineers were doing, before asking his assistant to polish the spotless, framed picture of us on the cover of Wired magazine.

"Yeah, you definitely have the bandwidth," Alex confirmed, nodding. "I'm pretty busy with the Forbes write up."

I didn't justify that with a response. I simply raised both eyebrows and nodded. I obviously didn't mention that I was the one spending the next few days with our PR team pre-vetting the questions that Forbes was going to ask Alex.

"Oh, are you going to be in Forbes?" Cassie asked, even though I was mentally imploring her not to. She was opening up a can of worms—a can of arrogant, self-important worms.

"Yeah, just this thing they're doing on young CEOs," he replied, beaming so brightly that I was practically tanning in his glow. "Can't give too many details."

"That's amazing," Cassie responded, which tickled Alex so hard he began to run a hand through his sandy hair, chuckling all the while.

I could vomit—green and projectile style, like in The Exorcist .

"Well, it sounds like Cassandra and I have this on lock, so if you need to go and work on that Forbes thing, feel free, Alex," I cut in. It was the only thing I could do that would keep me from just straight up walking out of the conference room. And not a moment too soon. The sexual tension radiating off Alex was so thick we could bottle it and sell it to frat guys at a three-hundred percent markup.

He paused and canted his head to the side before he rubbed his index finger along the tip of his chin, up his square jawbone, and back down to his chin. I knew that look all too well. Desperately, he was racking his brain for some excuse to stay that didn't reveal how little he had to do today. After five seconds, when he couldn't come up with anything, he surrendered with a nod. "Yeah, I'll take off," he agreed. "Marcus, you'll let me know if you need anything, I assume."

"Of course," I said—even though there was truly nothing I would need from him to get through the due diligence process. If anything, I just needed him to stay out of my way instead of popping into my office at random times of day to ask me what I thought about the Tweet he was going to send to his 1.1 million Twitter followers.

Alex went through an extended bye-nice-to-meet-you-I-hope-I-see-you-soon-wink-smirk-giggle with Cassie on his way out. That took up another two minutes of my day, which was a little over five dollars in company money (based on my annual salary).

Once we were alone, Cassie turned back to face me. At that point, I had moved into the seat at the head of the table and I was already watching her silently. She was doing the same. Brown eyes traced me through long eyelashes, and after a few seconds she wet her perfectly painted red lips with her tongue as she released a clicking sound, drawing attention to the fact that we had lingered on gazes for about half a minute.

Her expression shifted to curiosity as she raised an elegant, straight eyebrow and pursed her lips to the side. The move accentuated one rosy, shimmering cheekbone, so perfectly highlighted that I was surprised she wasn't sponsored by Glossier.

"Are you sure we don't know each other?" I asked her again, breaking the silence.

She raised both of her narrow shoulders. "I get that a lot."

"Interesting."

"I guess," she murmured, which ticked against my patience. Before I could say anything, she turned to her laptop. "Did you get the link to the data room I sent over last week?"

The data room was the online cloud-storage system where I was supposed to upload a dauntingly long list of company records so the external auditors could tear them apart one by one. I nodded. "I logged in and took a look around. Seemed straightforward."

"It is. Did you have any questions?"

My only question for her was how it was possible she didn't recognize me. Had she eviscerated so many college guys that she couldn't keep track anymore? "Nope."

"Great. Well, I'll oversee your cloud data room and your on-site room, which means I'll be here most days. Is this the best room for you and me to work in?" Cassie raised a perfectly manicured finger and rotated it generally, gesturing at the exposed brick walls behind me and to my left, where the windows faced the street outside.

"Do you need to be here in-person? Everything we have is digital."

"It's for validation purposes. You'll submit digital copies to the cloud data room for the auditors to review off-site, but they'll also need to come on-site to review the documentation as well as to verify it's authentic—and accurate. I'll make sure everyone is upholding the security principles associated with the on-site room."

"Which are…"

"You can read about them in the orientation document we sent last week," she said, which was the corporate equivalent of her saying, We already told you this, you dumbass.

"Humor me. Since we're here, and all." My response annoyed her; I could tell by the way she cocked one of those perfectly penciled, elegant eyebrows of hers for just a second .

"An on-site data room needs to be closely monitored and maintained. Only one person from any of our audit teams is allowed in at any given time, cannot bring in any electronics with data-copying capabilities, and can only enter at certain times as designated by a schedule you and I are going to create." She tossed that silky hair again, clearly for effect. "As I said, we'll need a room for you and me to work and a separate, secure room to use as the on-site data room."

"Conference room B over there is generally free," I said, nodding towards another conference room that ran adjacent to the open desks where the engineers worked.

She looked over and shook her head. That abrupt decline pissed me off a lot more than it should have. "It needs to be secure. Do you have any conference rooms that aren't made of glass?"

"No," I admitted. "Libra is a transparent company."

She snickered when I said that, which immediately made my skin prickle. The sound was familiar somehow, almost as though she made the same noise on that last, infamous night ten years ago. At once, Cassie recognized her mistake. She cleared her throat and looked back at her laptop screen, which was suddenly the most interesting thing in the room. "What about offices? I'm assuming HR has a space where they have confidential conversations with employees."

Our Head of People, Fiona, did use her office for things like that, but I wasn't about to put her out for sixty straight days. I wouldn't do that to anyone on staff, for that matter.

"Not an option."

"Well, you're going to have to give me something to work with here." Her tone was even, but her words weren't.

Six-second reset.

"What about my office?" I offered, tilting my head to the right. "It has blinds."

Her eyes followed the path over the open desks to the other side of the front room, where my office was located. Cassie raised her eyebrow. "Don't you need it?"

I hesitated before I said, "If I'm going to be in this room with you for the next two months, I guess not."

She, too, hesitated with her eyes locked on the tabletop. I could pretty much assume what she was contemplating: If I gave up my office, I was really going to be in the fishbowl with her all day, every day—for sixty fucking days. She probably expected to have the space to herself, and I would pop in and work with her as-needed. I didn't savor the idea of spending that much time with her, but for some reason it really annoyed me she felt the same way.

"Let's check it out," she finally suggested, which didn't surprise me. She was a due diligence analyst, after all. I assumed she rarely made decisions without first carrying out a thorough investigation.

I led her across the front of the office, past the engineers' desks. A few of them were seated there, watching shamelessly as Cassie and I passed. They knew what she was here for. All anyone on staff could talk about was the potential acquisition by Davenport-Ridgeway and how much it would hike up our stock. If this thing went through—and it better —nobody on staff would ever have to work again unless they felt like it. We were facing an all-stock deal, which meant Davenport-Ridgeway intended to buy out our shares, quick and painless.

Of course, the biggest winners would be Alex and me. We split sixty percent of Libra's stock. At our current five hundred million valuation, that was a total of one hundred and fifty million dollars each.

Each.

When we got to the other side of the main room, I opened the door to my office and motioned for Cassie to enter. Immediately, she walked over to the leather couch that sat adjacent to my desk and she took a seat. That was a first. People usually stood at the threshold like they were afraid to touch anything, but she walked right in like she owned the place.

"This is nice," she mused. She crossed her legs again and let one of her sharp-heeled pumps dangle off her foot—briefly. "A little smaller than I expected, if we're being honest."

I didn't know why that felt like a personal attack, but something about her nonchalance really dug at me. I didn't say a word. I simply stood by the door, keeping it open with my shoulder.

"And the blinds close?" she asked, nodding her head to the side where the glass wall opposite my desk faced the main room.

"They do," I confirmed. I reached out and pulled the cord, which sent the blinds careening downwards until the metal part at the bottom collided with the cement floor. The whole thing ended up being a lot more sudden than I intended, and it was a split-second switch between us being in plain sight of the office, and being closed-in. I flicked on the light in the corner, illuminating the room. Cassie was staring at me unfazed.

"So, what I propose is this," she said from her spot on my couch. "We designate your office as the on-site data room for the next two months. Once we make that decision, it's important you don't come in here anymore. You'll have to take out anything you need and bring it to the other conference room. Would that be okay?"

"It's not ideal," I responded, "but I obviously want this deal to go through. If this is what the diligence process requires, so be it."

So be it.

I may as well have tattooed that on my forehead. For the last ten years I had bled for this company—literally and figuratively. It was no surprise to me that this was how it would end.

"Great," she declared brightly, even though this was far from great. "Let's keep going."

For the next five hours—not kidding; it was five hours —we talked about due diligence. By the end of the day, my eyes had practically glazed over. I caught a glimpse of myself when my laptop screen ran dark and I looked like hell. My eyes looked more red than green and I had dragged my hands through my hair so many times that it looked like I just finished a workout.

Conversely, Cassie looked perfect the entire time. The entire time. Again, I wasn't kidding. Her blond hair stayed perfectly straight and her smile could flick on at a moment's notice. When we broke for lunch, she primly ate a kale salad, didn't have to reapply her lipstick, and got nothing in her teeth. I briefly toyed with the idea that she might not actually be human—that she might be some top-tier corporate robot that Davenport-Ridgeway rolled out for acquisitions because no living, breathing human could maintain the same level of composure for so long. But then I remembered I knew her, and she was very much real. And her demeanor hadn't changed much since we were in college, back when she sauntered into lecture with her spine straight, perched in the front of the lecture hall and listening attentively to the professor while she gracefully drank her coffee.

I had to hand it to her: She was a professional, which was a relief after her late arrival, her fixation with her cellphone, and the fact that ten years ago, she made my life a living hell.

To my relief, she closed her laptop and gave me a smile. Finally, I could exhale and release some of the tension that had been building in me for the last few hours. It was the most welcome respite in the world, and I was already counting down the minutes until I could go back to my office, put my head down on my desk, and maybe scream into my teeny, tiny garbage can.

"Well, I'll head out now, but I'll be back around eight tomorrow. Will you be here?" she asked as she put her things away in her expensive leather bag.

"I'm always here early," I confirmed before I let out a yawn that I just couldn't hold back.

"Sounds good." She hoisted the bag onto her shoulder. "And how are you doing? Feeling okay about the next two months?"

"Honestly, yeah," I admitted. "I thought we got a lot done today, which was a surprise after how it started."

Fuck .

It took me a second to realize I was so damn out of it that my filter had failed me. That almost never happened to me. I was a lockbox—and the countless sarcastic, vitriolic, and downright skeptical things I was always saying to myself rarely escaped. This was one of those exceptional moments, and it couldn't have come at a worse time. This woman was basically the one thing standing in the way of me getting one hundred and fifty million dollars. To say she merely had power over me was borderline insulting to her.

She owned me.

"Pardon?" Cassie asked as she tilted her head to the side and frowned. "How exactly did it start?"

"Oh," I said, like an idiot. Oh . "I'm just talking about how we started late."

"You're still mad I was late?" she snapped. And when she did that, her tone shifted entirely. Her precise, melodic, corporate-approved tone was replaced by something cutting. Something sharp. Lethal.

"Not mad," I responded. "Just…just hoping we won't make a habit of that."

Silence followed my comment, and for once I was uncomfortable with it. Usually, I loved silence. I was a regular Simon and Garfunkel when it came to silence. If it were possible, I would get down on one knee and propose to silence, vowing to love, honor, and respect her until my dying day. But right now, silence could go to hell.

"Look at your watch," she ordered after a beat. Her eyes went to my wrist.

Confused, I frowned. I glanced down at my watch and then back up at her. Her expression was stony. "Sorry?"

"Look at your watch," she repeated, her tone unrelenting. "Tell me what time it is."

"It's…three thirty-seven."

"Exactly," she confirmed, nodding at me with her brown eyes narrowed. "And what time did I get here?"

"Nine twenty-three."

"And what time does this meeting end, according to your calendar?"

I knew a trap when I saw one and I was clearly already caught in one. Still, I humored her. "It goes until four."

"So, that's a lot of numbers, but luckily I'm good at keeping track of these kinds of things. And it seems like I wasted twenty-three minutes of your time, so I went out of my way to give you back twenty-three minutes. And from an accounting perspective, I believe that means we're square. What do you think, Marcus?"

She said my name like it was an expletive. And I was stunned by the fact that after ten years, this tiny, doe-eyed blond could still completely transform like it was the night of the full moon. In fact, I was so stunned I couldn't think of anything better to do or say other than, "Are you fucking kidding me right now?"

Cassie paused, arms folded and her facial expression still fixed somewhere between accusatory and smug. After a beat, like she had her own six-second reset ritual, she smiled for the millionth time today. "I'm sorry I was late. It won't happen again."

Inhale, exhale, clench fist, unclench.

"I'm counting on that." My voice wavered as I spoke, which I resented, but couldn't really help.

"Have a good evening." She didn't wait for an acknowledgement. Instead she turned and strode out of the fishbowl and out of the office without another word, leaving me dumfounded and alone.

It wasn't the first time she had done that and it wasn't the worst either.