Page 122 of Due Diligence

That was another Borges Moment: It was a mistake to wait until the middle of the conversation to tell her about the NSFW content that Marcus and I had produced. Corinne paused with her lips parted, her jaw slowly lowering fractions of an inch until she snapped back to attention. “Cassandra, that’s incredibly problematic.”

“Don’t react yet,” I continued. “It’s actually much worse than that.”

“There’s more?” she demanded as her cheeks darkened. “How could there bemore? Did you two murder someone together and hide the body?”

“There’s a video of us together at the Libra offices. Alex Larson filmed us and he wanted to use that video as leverage to keep me from telling you about the data sale,” I admitted, although I strongly suspected she would have been more accepting of a murder.

Corinne was still as a statue, her gaze locked on me. The disgust on her face was undeniable, and if I weren’t equally disgusted with myself, I probably would have wilted under her glare. “Don’t say anything else.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it,” she insisted. “I don’t think we can talk about this anymore until I get HR and legal involved.”

“I understand.”

“And I should probably…” She looked down at her laptop and then back up at me. I could tell she was hesitating. “Cassandra, can I say something?”

Silently, I nodded.

Corinne tucked her long brown hair behind her ears and she leaned forward as she stared at me. “I’m going to say this not as an executive at this company, but just as another woman in the corporate world.”

“Sure.”

“How could you be so stupid?” she questioned. Her voice had turned sharp and there was this confusion in her eyes I had never seen before.

My gut reaction was to freeze. I turned to stone with breath in my lungs and a lump rising in my throat. I didn’t know how to respond to her. I just sat on her words, surprised to hear them, but not resistant. Those words dug into my skin and prickled through the surface, burrowing deeper as the silence dragged on.

I had been called many things in my life, but stupid had never been one of them.

I didn’t like this feeling.

I hated this feeling.

“How is it possible for someone so smart to make so many bad decisions?” She leaned back in her chair and shook her head, pausing like she was done. I knew that look. I knew she was far from done. And sure enough, she dipped forward towards me again. She bowed in her seat so I had nowhere to look but right in her eyes, and I wasgratefulbecause I could see that she was truly and deeply concerned about me.

“Corinne—”

“Look, I’m furious this deal has fallen through. It’s going to be a massive blow to my standing here, and I don’t know how I’m going to manage that. But I’m more upset you could be so reckless and so stupid as to let something like this happen to you. And for what?”

I started to respond, but Corinne held up her hand. God, she was powerful.

“Look, I don’t know you very well, but here’s what I do know: You’re brilliant. And I’m not just saying that because it’s sweet and that’s what we’re supposed to do, as women, to support each other. I’m saying it because it’strue. You’re so incomprehensibly smart that it makes me want to steal your soul somedays. So for me to see you screw up your career because of some guy, is…it’s practicallypainful.” Corinne pressed her lips together as she blew a thick exhale through her nostrils. “Please tell me I’m not the first person to recognize this.Pleasetell me that.”

“Far from it.”

That response did nothing to put her at ease. If anything, it increased her frustration tenfold. “So if you know you’re brilliant, why are you pretending you’re not?”

Once again, I was quiet. My mind started racing with all the memories—of Borges Moments and tutors and kids at school who gawked at me like I was a freak, and adults who told me I was definitely going to sit on the Supreme Court or win a Nobel Prize or cure cancer one day. I saw those moments in technicolor and surround sound. They pulsed and breathed with a life of their own. And the things I felt when I was living through them—the confusion and the fear and the anxiety and the absolute certainty they werewrong—they were wrong about me—still crashed through my body like it was brand new.

“Talk to me,” she requested, her tone softer as she watched me drift away in my own mind. “HR isn’t here. Legal isn’t here. But at this point, I have to know.”

“I’m just a little lost,” I admitted, in one of the grossest understatements and biggest lies I had ever delivered. “I don’t expect your sympathy. I don’t want it, either.”

“I know.”

“I made bad decisions. I’m not going to try to deny that. But…he was worth it.”

As soon as I said that out loud, my mind came to a screeching halt. And it was quiet for once—so lovely and quiet.

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