Page 5 of Due Diligence

In my defense, she had changed since we met during our freshman year of college at Princeton. She was obviously ten years older, not to mention reedier. Her blond hair was longer and darker now, a far cry from the shoulder-length bob she used to wear. It was still perfect though, which didn’t surprise me.

Cassie Pierson: perfection embodied in one tiny, loathsome little package.

Despite the physical differences, what hadn’t changed was my disdain for her. I could still picture that last night at school. That was the night she singlehandedly tainted every memory I had of my brief stint in college.

As we sat at that frosted glass table, on the verge of kicking off a sixty-day due diligence process, I found myself holding back passive aggressive comments like I was defending the walls of Troy. I could have easily said,Better late than never, right?Or I could have gone with,Looks like we missed the worm, right?And even though all those comments were straight out of theannoying, middle-aged, white dad phrasebook, I kind of wanted to annoy her.

But that wasn’t what I did.Inhale, exhale, clench fist, unclench. “Thanks so much for coming out here, Cassandra.”

My tone came out even. Normal. Even I was impressed with how well I was managing my emotions.

“Absolutely,” she responded, as if she had any say in the matter. We all knew Davenport-Ridgeway sent her over here, likely in a company car, with a clear directive:Rifle through these boys’ underwear drawer and find every bit of dirty laundry you can get your hands on.

“Oh wow, I’m so rude. Can we get you anything? Coffee? Tea? La Croix?” Alex asked her, gesturing to the side with his thumb.

La Croix. Good lord. This acquisition couldn’t come soon enough. If I had to sit in another meeting with Alex where he offered people La Croix like he was some kind of bougie, magical, tech messiah, I was going to have to double up on therapy…or CBD oil.

“I’m fine,” she assured him before she tossed her perfectly coiffed blond hair over her shoulder so it spilled over her silky white blouse. Somewhere out there, haircare companies were flipping through modeling headshots in vain, thinking they would find the perfect hair model for their products. On the contrary, I had her right here in my conference room.

She was clearly ready to get this process started and it was at that moment I realized she didn’t remember me. Fucking hell—shereally didn’t remember me. My hand began to tighten around my coffee cup. If it had been Styrofoam or paper, I would have collapsed the cup into itself, sending hot coffee all over the three of us and the glass table. It was a real,holy-shit-you-can’t-be-seriousmoment. And I didn’t know what was more tragic: the fact she forgot about me or the fact it made meso lividthat she forgot about me.

“Sorry, have we met before?” I found myself asking. Well, no. “Asking” was the wrong word for it. It was certainly not as smooth as it sounded. Instead, I ended up blurting the question out, which made both Alex and Cassie shoot identical looks of confusion in my direction.

“Possibly,” she responded, cool as could be. Her voice was melodic, just like I remembered. “This is my first time here.”

“Right,” I confirmed, working furiously to keep my tone cordial. “But elsewhere? You’re sure we’ve never met?”

She shook her head, smiling sweetly. “No, sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” I assured her. That was a lie though. I would have loved an apology from her. In fact, an apology was about the bare minimum of what I needed from her. If I had it my way, she would rent out a billboard in Times Square and plaster that apology for everyone to see for the next ten years.

“Really? Because you’re staring at me like you’re going to shake me down for answers.”

Immediately, Alex laughedwaytoo hard at her joke. It wasn’t even funny. In fact, I wasn’t exactly sure she was even making a joke. But of course, Alex laughed because that was his game. He would smile at them, cackle at their jokes, buy them a small three-thousand-dollar token of his appreciation, and then he would nail them.

“I apologize,” I offered, lying again and really forcing myself to deliver with a sincere tone (or one that gave the impression of sincerity, at least). “And now I’ve derailed your meeting. Please, go on.”

Cassie gave me another one of those perfect smiles. “No problem. Well, today is your first day of due diligence, which you should beincrediblythrilled about. I’ll be here the entire time, guiding you through it and acting as your point of contact to Davenport-Ridgeway. I’ll only do a minor part of the audits. My role is more around project management and liaising.”

I nodded. “Got it.”

“So, it sounds like we’re going to be working together a lot,” Alex commented. The delight in his voice was thick, like a layer of cream cheese frosting on a shitty piece of carrot cake. I didn’t know how I withheld my grimace, but I did—like a goddamn pro.

She smiled. Yet again. “Well, that’s up to you. For my approach, I require a singular point of contact. So, if that should be you, Lex, that’s fine. But it could also be Marcus.”

“Who would be better?” Alex asked. His question was a thinly veiled pick-up line, whether or not Cassie knew it.

“Between the two of you, it would be Marcus. This is a lengthy, in-depth process that is going to call upon a lot of historical and legal transactions as well as finances and personnel records. The Chief Operating Officer typically keeps those areas under their purview, and I assume you’ve followed that model.”

I could scoff. At Libra, we’d followed that model and then some. I was the mitochondria of the company. I personally managed six employees, who in turn managed sixty-two of our company’s sixty-five total employees. The only people I didn’t manage directly or indirectly were Alex, his executive assistant, and myself.

“I should do it,” I agreed, but it was mostly for Alex’s benefit. Cassie clearly knew this was a job for me, not the guy who usually rolled in at ten in the morning with a coffee and opined vaguely about what the engineers were doing, before asking his assistant to polish the spotless, framed picture of us on the cover ofWiredmagazine.

“Yeah, you definitely have the bandwidth,” Alex confirmed, nodding. “I’m pretty busy with the Forbes write up.”

I didn’t justify that with a response. I simply raised both eyebrows and nodded. I obviously didn’t mention that I was the one spending the next few days with our PR team pre-vetting the questions thatForbeswas going to ask Alex.

“Oh, are you going to be in Forbes?” Cassie asked, even though I was mentally imploring her not to. She was opening up a can of worms—a can of arrogant, self-important worms.

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