Chapter 4 Marcus

"You're late," I commented when she walked in.

"Walked" was the wrong word for it. She flung the door to the office open and burst in, her cheeks rosier than normal. She crossed the few steps from the front door to the entrance to the fishbowl, where she paused. Cassie inhaled sharply, but she didn't counter my remark. I didn't know how she would. She had no legs to stand on. Instead, she glanced down at her phone, which she was clutching so hard, her hand was practically shaking.

The floral scent of her perfume gently flowed into the room after she closed the door. Without a word, she placed her bag on the floor and removed the light, camel overcoat she was wearing. Today's picture perfect, catalog-ready outfit was a form fitting turtleneck and a pencil skirt that accentuated both her impeccable posture and lean figure. Not a thread was out of place. In fact, her clothes looked freshly ironed. It was classic Cassie Pierson, and I assumed it was the reason she was late.

"Problem with the subway?" I went on, watching as she silently rolled back her chair and took a seat at the other side of the table. As she scooted in, she shook her blond hair off her shoulders, revealing the impressive diamond studs she wore in her ears.

"No," she answered curtly. She exhaled through her nose, placed her phone into her bag, and then took out her laptop. Her eyes met mine and her expression relaxed. "I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

"That's what you said last time," I reminded her, watching as she focused on her screen and began to type. "And lo and behold."

Without a word, she pursed her matte red lips and locked her brown eyes on me once more.

"Did you hear me?"

"Marcus, I'm sorry. It was a mistake. It was unprofessional and I'm going to work to earn your trust and restore my credibility. You have my word."

Her word .

I paused, considering her offer. In any other scenario, I would gracefully accept her apology and I would even check to make sure her tardiness wasn't due to some personal challenge. It was what any decent person would do, and I liked to think I was a decent guy. More than decent. Hell, I was the youngest honoree on last year's list of notable New York philanthropists. But this scenario was different. This apology was bullshit and I knew it. It was rehearsed, right out of the corporate conflict resolution handbook. And try as she might to come off as empathetic, Cassie Pierson was anything but.

Ten years ago, this woman nearly broke me. Ten years ago, she was able to knock me off my game and send me off into a bender so bad I ended up vomiting in Alex's dorm room dresser because I thought it was a toilet. I was so shaken by it, Dr. Jensen recommended I speed up my departure from Princeton, just to put it all behind me.

So, sorry not sorry—I just wanted to watch her squirm. I wanted her to loathe me. I wanted her brimming with pent up frustration, practically boiling with it. I wanted to watch her fight every natural instinct in her body to lash out at me. And frankly, I was going to enjoy it.

A lot.

As a sidenote, this was definitely something to explore in therapy, but that would have to wait until tomorrow when I had my standing call with Dr. Jensen.

I stood, walked over to the window, and rotated the clear adjuster to open the blinds. Murky morning light filtered into the room, reflecting on the transparent walls and the tempered glass tabletop. I lingered there, watching as Cassie forced herself to focus on her laptop. "Well, are we going to work, or are we just going to sit here in awkward silence?"

"I vote we work," she responded, clearly trying to keep her tone bright. "We need to run through a checklist to make sure we have what we need uploaded to your data room. I like to start with the legal documents, since those audits typically take the longest. How is the file transfer process going?"

I made my way back to my chair and I stood behind it, resting both of my hands along the hard edge of its back. It was a Herman Miller Aeron. Ergonomic. Engineered for productivity. Timeless . It cost over a thousand dollars—a number I didn't balk at when I saw it. At that very moment, I had exactly one hundred and fifteen of these chairs all throughout the three-story office building. They sat there unassumingly behind each and every desk and every tempered glass table.

"Fine," I said, still standing behind my chair and wondering if she knew just how much it cost. I wouldn't be surprised if she did. Cassie Pierson had always been the poster child for subtle luxury. Even back in college, all anyone had to do was look at her and they could just tell—the girl looked expensive.

"Do you have any problems with that?"

"Nope." I pulled my chair back and it rolled like butter. I sat, relaxing into perfectly engineered suspension that held my body in all the right ways. Most people would spend forty years at a desk job, never once sitting in a chair like this. I, on the other hand, could build a fortress with mine.

"Great, so I'll start going through each of your uploads—"

"I read your résumé," I cut in. I leaned back in the chair, one ankle resting on the opposite knee. I was going for casual—unbothered. Although, the position really wasn't all that comfortable. I was just too stubborn to move. "It's really impressive, Cassandra."

She paused when she heard me mention her résumé. Her eyes immediately drifted to the exposed red brick to her right. I could practically hear the gears in her mind working, trying to ascertain if I recognized her or not.

I do, Cassie .

"Not half as impressive as yours," she countered, foolishly thinking she could deflect and distract me with flattery. It wasn't a bad tactic, but it was child's play. I worked with Alex Larson; I practically invented this move.

"I know," I replied. "But let's not compare apples to oranges."

Cassie inhaled sharply and looked up at me, those big brown eyes narrowing steadily into a downright lethal death stare. She ticked her laptop screen down just an inch before she folded her hands together. "So, did you have any questions about why we need you to provide any of these documents?"

Still reclining in my seat, I raked my fingers through my hair before I tilted my head to the side. "You did undergrad at Princeton. Moved here to the city after graduation…and that's where I found a gap. Based on the résumé your company sent over, there's a year between you graduating and then you getting a job at Davenport-Ridgeway. That's interesting."

"Not really," she responded, her gaze unrelenting. I stared right back at her—I could do this all day. "Certainly not as interesting as your articles of incorporation. I'd love to talk about the existing terms for your board members and make sure we have up-to-date conflict-of-interest statements on hand."

"What were you doing for that year?" I went on, delighting in the way her shoulders sagged when I continued. "According to your résumé, you were phi beta kappa at Princeton. That's a feat. What is it—the top ten percent of the graduating class receives that honor?" I released a whistle. "I find it hard to believe it took you an entire year to get a job."

"I went to law school," she answered sharply. "For three months. Then, I dropped out and had to work hourly wage jobs until I finally got a temp job at Davenport-Ridgeway, which turned into a full-time job. Then I got my MBA and now I'm back at D-R. That's the whole story. Nothing interesting or noteworthy there. But back to your conflict-of-interest statements—"

"Law school was hard, I see." As soon as she realized I was really going to keep traveling down this path, Cassie actually went so far as to close her laptop. "I know not everyone is cut out for it."

"How would you know?" she shot back. "Did you ever go to law school? Because if I remember correctly, you didn't even finish undergrad."

I smirked, victorious. There it is . There was that insatiable desire to say whatever the hell she wanted, whenever the hell she wanted. I knew she still had it in her.

As soon as Cassie saw me smirking, she realized her misstep. She released a soft hum, forced a smile, and said, "Law school wasn't for me, so I pivoted. That's it."

"Was it the pressure?"

"No, not the pressure." She shook her head. "It just wasn't what I wanted to do, so I made my own path."

I gritted my teeth and inhaled, pretending to be perplexed. "Yeah, I just feel like there's got to be more to this story. I just feel like you were probably super driven in undergrad, and probably told everyone you were preparing to go to law school one day. I mean, that's just, like, the vibe I get from you, you know?"

As I said this, I thought back to the time I was eating breakfast in the dining hall and watching Cassie hand out flyers for her campaign for freshman class president. Alex had nodded his chin in her direction and said, "This is the first step in her master plan to go to Harvard Law, become a Supreme Court Justice, and lay to rest in the Capitol building one day." I didn't have a response for that. I just remembered thinking she was the most beautiful and intimidating girl I had ever seen in my life.

"Are you playing with me?" she questioned.

Yep .

I scooted up in my chair. "Sorry, what?"

"You're obviously getting at something," she continued, gesturing at me with graceful, polished motions—like a symphony conductor. "We can both tell. So, if there's something you want to say to me, please go ahead. Otherwise, I think we need to work."

"I have nothing to say to you."

"Could have fooled me," she murmured.

That comment dug into a nerve. "What did you say?"

Cassie hesitated before she forced yet another smile, which was really starting to get under my skin. "Nothing. I just want to focus on the data room."

"Jesus Christ, is that all you think about? Your precious data room? If this is so damn important to you, why do you have the audacity to keep showing up late?"

"Oh here we go…"

"No," I cut in, no longer working to temper my emotions. "I was clear yesterday. I wanted you here on time. We're not going to sidestep that and pretend it never happened just because you feel like it."

To my chagrin, she leaned back in her seat as well. "So you would rather squabble about me walking in a minute late instead of working?"

"This is important."

She let out a scoff. "I'm sorry, but how is this more important than due diligence? This is the last hurdle to you getting nine digits in payout for your little company, so you should want me to push you to work on this."

As soon as she said that, I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. "Libra is not a little company, Cassandra."

"It's just a turn of phrase. I'm well aware your company has a half billion-dollar valuation. No need to jump down my throat over it."

Finally, I snapped my own laptop shut—a signal that we most certainly would not be working together today. In fact, it was a signal that shit was about to go down. She had stumbled upon another one of my triggers: Libra. What I wanted to say to her was that Libra was like my kid, and if anyone said a thing about her, I would end the fucker.

Of course, I couldn't say that. Instead, I said, "I'm not going to let you belittle this. I built this company from the ground up, and if you're not willing to respect it, I can't have you working here."

Naturally, she frowned. "I wasn't disrespecting anything. I'm just meeting your energy, which has been toxic since the moment I walked in."

"Oh cool, so this is all on me, right? Somehow, I'm the reason we're fighting."

"Are you insane? You provoked me . You sat there and recited my résumé like some kind of psychopathic version of LinkedIn. What the hell is wrong with you?" She pushed her hand through her blond hair, for once upsetting her perfect coif. "What do you want me to say?"

"I want an apology."

"I already apologized," she insisted, eyes wide. "It was the first thing I did when I walked in here. Honestly—do you want me to take an ad out in the Times or something?"

"It's not enough," I snapped—and I wondered how long it was going to take her to realize we weren't just talking about her late arrival anymore.

"You're unhinged, you know that?" she declared as she rose to her feet. Her pretty face contorted. "And I'm off to a hell of a morning, so if you're seriously going to sit there and accuse me—"

Fuck it .

"Get out," I said, trouncing her sentence.

For once, Cassie was at a loss for words. She lifted an eyebrow as the gravity of what I said dawned on her. "Excuse me?"

"Get out of my office," I ordered as I stood as well. "We're not doing this, half a billion be damned. Take your shit and go."

"You don't get to decide what I do. My job is to complete this process, and that's exactly—"

"Go before I call security," I interrupted again. "I mean it. Try me, Cassandra."

Cassie's face flushed, but before she responded she glanced to the side and she froze. I did the same. It was only then that I realized she and I may as well have been putting on a production for the entire office. A sea of eyes met me, staring at the conference room where our due diligence analyst was standing with her hands braced on the table, and I was gripping the edge of it.

"Fine," she decided after a moment when she looked back at me. Her expression tightened even deeper, like she was casting a curse on me. "I'm going to my office and I'll audit you from there."

"Thrilling," I retorted. I straightened my spine and crossed my arms. "Can't wait to hear how that goes. But don't get too obsessed with it, because I'll be shocked if you're still on this account at the end of the day."

"It's not an account, asshole!" she blurted out, whirling around as she paused the process of packing up her belongings "You're not a fucking account. You're a seller and we're buyers. We're literally trying to give you hundreds of millions of dollars. Do you know how much money that is? That's ‘fuck you' money, Marcus."

"‘Fuck you' money?"

She nodded. "Yeah. ‘Fuck you,' money. It's an amount of money so large, you could waltz up to your boss and say, ‘fuck you,' once it came into your possession because the ramifications no longer matter. And all those people out there," she said as she gestured to the crowd of onlookers, "would love to have ‘fuck you' money. So if you want to put that at risk, be my guest. To be honest, I don't care. I'm just doing my job."

"Then do your job better."

"I was late twice!" she insisted as she scooped up her bag. "And you have some nerve criticizing me for making a little mistake, based on your history."

"What the hell does that mean?" I asked the question, but deep down, I knew what she was talking about. It was the Vanity Fair article, I was sure. The one that followed me wherever I went.

"So great to meet you," she snapped, causticity seeping through every syllable. "I really hope this whole thing works out for you."

"Thanks for your love and support!" I shouted back at her retreating figure.

As soon as she was out of the fishbowl and then out of the building, I kicked my chair, which slammed against the brick wall. When I turned around again, I realized that every single person on staff, Alex included, was still staring at me with wide eyes. I couldn't blame them. It had been close to six years since I had allowed myself to show this much emotion at work—or anywhere, for that matter.

Six-second reset.

The first thing I did was roll my chair back to its place at the head of the table. I aligned it with the edge, making sure it was centered. Then I picked up my laptop and headed back to my office. Dozens of pairs of eyes followed me as I walked, with only my footsteps on the hardwood floor to break the silence.

I wasn't supposed to be in my office anymore, but I couldn't give a shit about that. I took a seat at my desk, which was covered in file boxes and binders, and I put my head down on the surface.

"What just happened?" Alex demanded as he walked in without knocking. "Are you okay?"

Another six-second reset.

"I'm fine."

"You look…very far from fine, my friend," he finally said. "Where the hell did Cassandra just go?"

"I don't care," I responded. "Alex, tell me: Do you remember her from college?"

"College?" he asked, brow furrowed. "We barely went."

I forced myself to release a measured exhale. Sometimes, I really wondered how it was possible for Alex to be so brilliant yet so dense at the same time. "We went for four months," I reminded him. "You don't remember her at all? She was in our year at Princeton. Class president. Cassie Pierson."

"Well, that was ten years ago." He frowned and his handsome face looked young as he racked his brain. "Did I sleep with her?"

"Nope."

"And we both know you didn't sleep with her. Was she a friend of ours?"

"Definitely not."

"Okay, so—"

"She's the girl from Ivy," I reminded him.

The Ivy Club was one of Princeton's eating clubs, which were basically co-ed fraternities and sororities. During our brief stint at college before we dropped out to found Libra, we did most of our partying at those eating clubs. I wasn't surprised it took Alex a few beats to make the connection. Truth be told, we were blackout drunk most of the time.

"Oh, her ." After the moment of recognition passed, Alex frowned once again. "Wait, are you still upset about that?"

I groaned and leaned forward, resting my head against one of the file boxes. "Apparently I am. I didn't realize I was so angry about it until I recognized her. Then all those fucked up things she said and did to me just came flooding back, and I just…"

Alex cleared his throat as he took a step closer to my desk. "Look. I want to be your best friend, but I have to be a CEO right now. Marcus, you need to pull it together."

When I looked up at him, he was staring down at me, arms folded. The dynamic felt…off. It was usually me standing there and reminding Alex how to behave, not the other way around.

"I know you're upset, but the entire staff is buzzing out there because you just flipped out and sent our due diligence analyst packing, so—"

"So what?"

"I think it's important you assuage any concerns that this deal could fall apart. Plus, I think they'd like to see that their COO isn't having a nervous breakdown."

"I'm not having a nervous breakdown; I'm just frustrated. Jesus, Alex. Not every person who goes to therapy is some kind of ticking time bomb."

"I didn't say you were."

I raised an eyebrow and forced myself to withhold a response. The number of times Alex had made jokes about my outspoken reliance on my therapist might outnumber our inventory of Herman-Miller chairs.

"Look, as COO, it's my job to make sure we get through due diligence, so I'm going to handle that part," I said. "I could use some help though. If you—as CEO and leader of the company—can find some free time, maybe you could put the staff's mind at ease."

"Okay, but what would I tell them?" he asked in all seriousness.

Alex's question reminded me of a conversation I had with one of my moms back when I was in high school. I was working on a group project, and there was one girl in our assigned group of four. We were supposed to put together a presentation on The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, which we were reading at the time. We all went over to her house one weekend, put together the poster for the presentation, wrote the content, rehearsed it, and then delivered it at school the following week. I thought everything was fine until the teacher asked me to stay after class, along with the other two guys from the group.

According to my teacher, the sole girl in our group said she felt as though she contributed more to the project. While she didn't necessarily want the teacher to reflect that in our grades, she thought it was important to share.

I remembered feeling pissed off and telling my mom this girl was a liar, because we had all gotten together to work on the project. And then my mom, asked me, Who figured out what materials you needed for the project? She did. And who made sure you all got together on the weekend? She did. And who ordered the pizza when you were working late? She did. This line of questioning continued until my mother basically got me to admit that while we all did the same amount of work on the presentation, we allowed the girl in my group to take on the massive mental load of thinking about the project, preparing for it, and making sure everything was squared away.

This concept was the "mental load:" It was the invisible work that so often falls to women. It was the taxing act of making sure a grocery list was complete and would meet the needs of every person in the family. It was making sure the laundry was done so every member of the family would have clean clothes for the week. Husbands might take on the shopping or might put the laundry in the machine, but it still didn't help with the mental load.

I was obviously not a woman and Alex clearly wasn't my husband, but for a decade I had managed his mental load for him. So when he asked me what to tell the staff, I realized I could either take the time to put together the message for him so he could go out and simply say it—or I could save myself the time and deal with the staff later. As usual.

"You're right," I said after a beat. I raised both shoulders and held up my hands. "I'll call Davenport-Ridgeway first, and then I'll come out. Tell everyone to hang tight and tell them lunch is on me."

"Thanks, Marcus," he responded, nodding seriously in a way that made me want to elbow him in the nose. "I know we're going to fix this."

As soon as he left my office, I raised my middle finger at the space where he was just standing. His use of the "royal we" just now was borderline insulting.

We .

Bullshit. I was going to fix this—me and me alone.

Last week when I talked to Dr. Jensen, he was concerned about the sheer number of changes I was facing because of the acquisition and the due diligence process. Concerned I might revisit some of my old habits, he recommended we try out a strategy I used for a few years, starting in the eighth grade. That was the year I switched schools because one of my classmates bullied me every lunch period for having two moms. I was relieved to get away from my bully, but had always struggled with change (likely some residual impact from switching from one foster home to the other for so many years). Back then, I started carrying around a composition notebook. Every time I was feeling upset, I would write in it.

These days, I was using a three-ring binder. I kept a few things in there: some of the checklist documents Cassie gave me, some trackers I designed for myself, and at the very end, some blank sheets of paper where I could jot down notes about Cassie, or Alex, or whatever was on my mind. I spent ten minutes before I finally felt ready to move on with salvaging this absolute clusterfuck of a situation.

The first thing I did was dial the number for Corinne Tyler from Davenport-Ridgeway, who had been the main contact for the acquisition up until this point. She and I had spent countless hours in meetings, talking through the fine points of the deal and how the acquisition would go. In that time, I had come to marvel at her competence—and as a result, I felt confident my concerns about Cassie wouldn't just fall on deaf ears.

"Marcus, how are you?" she greeted when she answered the phone. "I'm excited to hear how due diligence is going."

"I won't bullshit you, Corinne," I said sharply. "I'm a busy man and I don't have time to be dealing with the whims of your analyst. We're not going to work. I'll need a replacement as soon as you can get me one."

There was a long pause, which I felt no pressure to fill. After a beat, Corinne said, "Talk me through it."

"How much time do you have?" I asked. "Because I can give you the long version or the short version."

"Give me the long version."

"Fine. Well, ten years ago…"