Page 121 of Due Diligence

Marcus’s last night at college was a Borges Moment.

The time I went home with a guy and had incredibly loud sex, not realizing that he shared a two-bedroom apartment with his mother was a Borges Moment.

And last night was a Borges Moment.

Marcus couldn’t even make eye contact with me. He was seated in Alex’s desk chair with his hands on the back of his neck, massaging it as he breathed between his knees. The door was locked and the blinds were shut tight. He had just confirmed what I had suspected—that he had gotten to the bottom of themystery transactions and it wasn’t pretty. It was hideous, in fact. But in addition to that, he had just confirmed there was now photographic evidence of me and him together—and it was in the hands of Alex Larson.

Minutes passed. Neither of us spoke until he said, “I’ve spent all morning trying to think of how I can fix this, and I don’t know what to do.” He looked up at me, his green eyes pained. He raised a shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

I knew he was.

“I’ve never encountered a problem I couldn’t solve,” he went on. “And the fact that you’re involved in this and I can’t fix it is—”

“Stop,” I interjected.

Surprised, Marcus lowered his hands from his neck. His expression was familiar; it was the face he made on that night in college when I hurt him. I recognized the shock and confusion—his disbelief that I had the capacity to hurt anybody.

He thought I was about to do the same thing, and that thought tortured me.

“What’s there to fix?” I asked, working to keep my tone calm. “Is it your job to fix your company after your CEO committed a major breach of consumer trust and data management, or is it your job to fix my career after I was careless and put my job on the line?”

I knew him well enough to recognize he really did think it was his responsibility to repair all of this—the company, the deal with Davenport-Ridgeway, and me.

Marcus. Sweet, selfless Marcus.

“It was never your job to fix me,” I told him, shaking my head. “Worry about Libra and worry about yourself right now. That’s all you can do.”

“But what about you, Cass? You need this job—”

“Well,” I said as I rose out of my chair. “I guess I shouldn’t have been so reckless with it, right?”

“Cass…”

“I have to go tell Corinne now,” I informed him. I picked up my tote from the floor of Alex’s office. “Immediately.”

Marcus’s hands went back to his neck and I could see the tension ripping through him. It made him look so much younger than he was—or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe he finally looked his age. Twenty-eight. Still a kid in so many ways.

“Don’t pity me,” I said as I stood by the door. “The last time I fucked up my life like this, it put me on the path that led me to you. Sometimes it’s not bad to reap what you sow.”

I left before he had a chance to respond.

***

Corinne let out a heavy sigh—a sigh that held more volumes than a full set ofEncyclopedia Britannicas. “You’re certain?”

Silently, I nodded. I felt stupid staying quiet, but there wasn’t anything I could say that would change the situation. The deal would fall through. End of story.

If Corinne and I were optimists, maybe we would have celebrated the fact that we dodged a bullet. Inevitably, the truth about Libra would have come to light. Had that happened while Davenport-Ridgeway owned the company, the ripple effect of that kind of scandal could have been a tsunami in the making.

But as luck would have it (not luck, but just the cold reality of women who worked in corporate America), neither Corinne nor I were optimists.

“Fuck,” she murmured before she slammed the palm of her delicate, well-moisturized, six-carat Harry Winston engagement ring-sporting hand on her desk. “Ihatethese stupid tech boys sometimes.”

“There’s something else,” I continued, “that you should know.”

Corinne’s eyes widened and I had never seen a beautiful woman’s façade break more quickly in my entire life.

“Marcus Fitz and I were…intimate.”

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