Page 23 of Due Diligence

-Alice

Damn it. I could already tell something was off; Alice only sent these brief messages when there was a bad moon on the rise. I hovered over the document attached to the email, the little pointer just sitting there on top of the Microsoft Word icon.

Six-second reset.

I steeled myself, clicked the attachment, and waited for it to save to my desktop. It took another beat for me to collect my resolve and to open it.

Over the years, people had told me I made mountains out of molehills. And sure, I would concede thatmaybeI could be overdramatic when it came to something as simple as opening a copy of an interview my best friend did with one of the preeminent business magazines in the world. But my best friend was Alex Larson—and I’d learned over the years that Alex Larson often warranted an overreaction.

The article was titled: “The Data Debate,” with the subtitle:Lex Larson has a message for all of us: You don’t own your data anymore.

At once, my stomach started to feel like someone had pinched a small section of my insides and was slowly twisting it into a knot. This feeling magnified by the second, growing tighter as I continued to read the article. Paragraph after paragraph added insult to injury, and by the time I reached the last line of the article, my anxiety had hit a peak. One thing was certain: I was going to have to clean up an absolute shitstorm.

My feet did the work for me for the next minute because my brain was cloudy. I made it across the office at an even, measured clip—one that wouldn’t raise alarm bells with any of the employees working at the open desks. When I got to Alex’s office, I didn’t knock. Fuck that. I didn’t care what he was doing; this was now the single most important thing on our plates.

His blue eyes swerved up to meet me when I walked into his office unannounced and shut the door behind me. He was reclining in his chair with his feet balanced on his desk, phone in hand.

“You good?” he asked, even though he knew I wasn’t. I could tell by the way his gaze drifted down to my tightened fist and then back up to my face.

“What do you think?”

He ticked both eyebrows upwards before he took his feet off his desk. “Let me guess,” he said. “More trouble with Cassie Pierson?”

“Cassie?” I clarified. “No. I mean—yes. But I’m not here about her. I’m here about Forbes, Alex.”

“Yeah?” he asked. He clasped his hands together and leaned forward on the surface of his desk, his weight pressing on his forearms. He then had the audacity to grin. “Did Alice send you—”

“Motherfucker,” I interjected. “You didn’t use a single one of the acceptable talking points I wrote for you. Are you out of your mind?”

He glanced to the left and then back to me, as if there were some invisible crowd in the room that he thought would side with him. His expression dripped with confusion. “You do know it was an interview withme, don’t you? I have a right to say what I want to say, not just what you tinker together with the PR team.”

I held up a hand, motioning for him to be quiet. I had to fold my lips over and close my eyes for a beat while I collected myself, before saying, “Theonlyreason we still need to keep a PR team on retainer is because of you. You can’t put this kind of stuff into print.”

“Relax.”

“No, I’m not going to relax,” I objected as I took a step forward towards the desk between us. “There’s now evidence of you saying you think people are—and I quote, ‘up their own butts about data they don’t even understand.’”

When I recited that line from the article, Alex smirked. And as if that smirk weren’t enough, this clown then had the nerve to snort and cover his hand with laughter.

Imbecile.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Because it’s hysterical. Come on. You have to admit that’s a great line.”

I gritted my teeth because I didn’t even know where to start. Part of me wanted to tell Alex that he had clearly been rich and handsome for too long, because nothing about that quote was remotely close to funny. Another part of me wanted to resign where I stood.Anotherpart of me wanted to reach over, pick up the can of pamplemousse La Croix on his desk, and pour it over his idiotic Patagonia vest. And yetanotherpart of me knew I couldn’t do any of those things.

“I’m going to have to call our lawyer about this,” I said once I came up with the words. “I don’t think I can kill the article, so we’re going to have to get ahead of it.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Alex insisted as he stood. He strolled around the side of the desk and planted in front of me. “Lighten up.”

“Don’t,” I warned.

He put a hand on each of my shoulders, squeezing them. He raised his chin so our eyes were level. “Dude, it’sfine.Maybe people will like it. You know, I stand by what I said in the article: User data is helpful for marketing purposes. It’s not like people are using it for evil or something.”

I furrowed my brow, careful not to break eye contact. “Please tell me you’re messing with me. Please don’t tell me I’ve professionally bound myself to someone who thinks personal privacy is overrated.”

Six-second reset.

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