Page 126 of Due Diligence

Unfortunately for them, I was so serious I could have been a Windsor.

“Are you kidding?” Alex questioned. “Then how do you expect to get ahead of this?”

“I don’t care,” I replied, shrugging for effect. “I don’t care if the entire world finds out you sold our user data. I don’t care if the entire world finds out I had sex with our due diligence analyst so many times that my cardio fitness has actually improved over the past month. I don’t even care if you send that video of me and Cass making out in the office to my mothers. I just want to get away from this absoluteshit showof a company. In fact, I should probably go ahead and kick off what promises to be a long bout of therapy—therapy I’ll need to come to terms with the fact that I wasted a decade of my life on you.”

As soon as I finished speaking, I stood. Alex remained in his seat, brow tight, and one hand gripping his phone.

“Not sure who you’re going to call,” I continued, nodding at his hand. At this point, it was salt in an open wound, but I didn’t care. It feltgood. It was the best catharsis I had ever had, next to being with Cass. “You don’t even know where our lawyer works. It’s Skadden, by the way. You should probably learn that because I’m officiallydonedoing anything for you.”

“Marcus, what the hell are you talking about?” Alex asked as he, too, stood. I took that as my cue to leave.

He was calling my name as I headed towards the elevator. When he caught me at the elevator bay, he slammed his fist against the wall by the button panel.

“Are you kidding me right now?” he demanded, his face tinged with pink.

Six-second reset.

“Alex, I’m officially resigning as the Chief Operating Officer of Libra, effective as soon as humanly possible,” I told him, refusing to break eye contact or back down. Once the words left me, I could literally feel my chest loosen in a way that it hadn’t in years.

“You can’t just leave,” he insisted. He started shaking his head and he didn’t stop. “You’re a majority shareholder and the second highest standing person in the company. You can’t just quit.”

I watched his gaze tick with desperation. “The fact that you still think I’m the second highest standing person in the company is ridiculous. I bet you couldn’t even tell me the last names of anyone outside of the executive team.”

He didn’t object, but he didn’t prove me wrong either. He simply let out an exhale and asked, “And why does that even matter?”

“It matters because you fucked over sixty-five people because you were greedy. Our shares are going totank. We’re all going to be out of a job unless some kind of corporate miracle shines upon us. We’re completely screwed. And you can go sit at home on the comfortable little nest egg that you built, but a lot of people are going to see their financial stability crumble in the next month. Theleastyou could do is pretend that you care about any of them.”

He pulled his head back and took a step away from me. He kept one hand on his belt and the other went up to his mouth,like maybe I finally elucidated something that had evaded him throughout the last few years.

When he looked up at me again, his blue eyes were pained. Those blue eyes used to grace the covers of magazines and webpages, spurring comments from people all over the world about how Alex—Lex Larson—was the whole package. He was brilliant, ambitious, striking, and unafraid to strike his position in an industry dominated by storied titans.

When he looked at me now, his eyes were weary.

“How can you even think I don’t care about you? Marcus, you’re my best friend. We’ve been side by side since we were eighteen years old, and you think I don’t want the best for you?”

“We aren’t who we were when we were eighteen,” I responded gravely. “And Libra isn’t the company it was when we were eighteen either. I’ve changed. So have you. But we’ve both fucked up and now we have to live with that. No matter how you spin it, we’re not kids anymore.”

He let out another extended exhale and looked away from me, like he was maybe on the verge of tears. After a beat, he shrugged his shoulder. “The lawyer is at Skadden?” he confirmed. His voice wavered at first, but steadied as he spoke.

I nodded.

“And your contract says you have to transition out over six months. Can you still do that?”

“I can do that.”

Alex swallowed hard. “Okay than,” he said, nodding again. “And can you ever forgive me?”

That one hit me. It pierced right through the softest part of my stomach and came out the other side, leaving me wanting for air. Somehow, I steeled myself. I kept staring at him, looking for my best friend in this person.

Six-seconds.

Twelve seconds.

Eighteen.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

It was an honest response, but it wasn’t the one either of us wanted to hear me say.

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