Page 133 of Due Diligence

It was just after eight when I left the Libra offices for the last time. It was a day I’d had on my calendar for six months. I didn’t need to explain why I had been dreading it, but also anticipating it for all one hundred eighty-something days.

Fuck.

The space looked small and silent. Dark. Almost foreign. I stood in the middle of the front room, adjacent to the rows of open desks where the developers worked.

I took it in for the last time.

I could still remember being twenty years old and touring this building with Alex. We stood here together, looked at each other, and tacitly agreed this was the exact space where we would buildLibra into a full-fledged company. That was over eight years ago, and I could still remember the rush of recognition I felt when we nodded at each other. This was it. This was going to be our home.

A few minutes later, I stepped outside of the building and into the chilly New York evening. I tugged my jacket close to me and let out a deep exhale, watching as my breath fogged. The coolness prickled my skin and immediately pinched my nose. For some reason, it felt like an omen:Don’t leave, Marcus. Go back inside. You’re supposed to be in there.

After a beat, I realized I wasn’t alone. Standing with his hands tucked into the pockets of his coat was none other than Alex Larson. He was watching me, cheeks pink and eyes bleary. I wondered how long he had been waiting for me to leave. He nodded his chin, and I didn’t know what else to do but to nod back. The exchange was strange and we both knew it. We hadn’t seen each other in six months.

“Can I walk with you?” he asked.

I nodded. And then I didn’t know what else to say to him. I had no clue where he had been for the last six months, and he sure as shit had no clue what I had to go through. My days had been long, the nights had been sleepless, and the tension had been high in every way possible. The fact that Libra was still in operation was a miracle.

After the deal with Davenport-Ridgeway fell through, there was a shock to our stock price that caused shares to drop considerably. Alex and I both lost tens of millions of dollars overnight as our company steadily devalued. Then, when word got out about the data sale, users began cancelling their subscriptions and deleting their accounts. Naturally, our stock plummeted like a skydiver without a parachute. Then the lawsuits started.

The Board agreed on a clear path forward: Alex would step down as CEO immediately, and I would fill his shoes as interim CEO until we could find a replacement. Within a month, we had hired a woman who had previously worked at several fintech unicorns. Once she was hired, I could focus on transitioning my responsibilities to a new COO.

Two months into the transition, I promoted our Head of Business Development to Chief Operating Officer. Then I could focus my attention on two places: training him for my role and managing the absolute shitstorm of a legal battle that Libra was facing.

Thanks to whistleblower protections, I wouldn’t face any direct legal consequences. All the evidence showed that Alex acted alone in the transactions in question. Once the investigation started, I had to provide multiple official statements and attend countless interviews with the FTC. I assumed Alex faced a similar fate—likely one far worse, actually.

And then there was today. My last day.

I was exhausted, unemployed, and I was worth next to nothing. I wasn’t even thirty and I had endured a fall from grace so severe that I really didn’t know how I was still standing.

Necessity. Therapy.

And Cass.

“I live in this direction now,” I told him, nodding to the right. “I’m leasing a smaller place.”

Alex nodded his head in understanding. “Yeah, I sold my place too,” he admitted. “I’ve been living with my parents.”

“How are they?”

“To be honest, I think they hate me at this point.” Alex let out a slow exhale. “I don’t blame them.”

I didn’t know how to answer that, but I wished I did. We ended up walking silently, side by side, for a couple of blocks. And I wished that felt normal, but it didn’t. Alex and I werenever silent around each other. From the day we met, eighteen years old and roommates in a shitty shoebox of a dorm room, we always had something to say to each other.

“My lawyer thinks I’m going to avoid any prison time or anything like that. Based on precedent, I’ll probably be barred from ever leading a company again. And that’s fine because I don’t think any company would hire me to do that.” He lifted a shoulder. “I honestly wasn’t all that great at it to begin with.”

“You weren’t,” I admitted. “But that’s not all your fault.”

We stopped at a crosswalk and Alex turned to me. He frowned deeply, his blue eyes scanning my face. “Whose fault was it then?”

“Let’s be clear, it was mostly your fault,” I quipped, hoping that would make him laugh. Now that neither of us was rich, we actually had to be funny to make people laugh.

To my relief, Alex let out a chuckle. “I hear you.”

“But part of it was just circumstance. When we were eighteen years old, someone offered us tens of millions of dollars and told us to drop out of college, so we did. And then it was just this stratospheric, hyper speed trip to the moon.” I shook my head. “Other people’s expectations are the most dangerous weapon in the goddamn world. I’m not surprised we both ended up losing touch with reality.”

“What reality?” he asked.

The light changed and we started walking again.

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