“It’s not.” He gestures to the chair. I sit. “Tell me what happened.”
So I do. The whole thing. Kendrick. The investigation. The lies. The promise I broke. Her face when she found out.
“I thought I was protecting her,” I finish.
Ethan is quiet for a moment. Then he says the thing I don’t want to hear.
“You weren’t protecting her, Nico,” he explains. “You were controlling the situation. Like you always do. There’s a difference.”
“He was still teaching,” I protest. “Still doing it to other women.”
He nods. “And that’s terrible. It warranted action. Butwhoseaction?”
I don’t answer.
“You made a decision about her trauma without her consent,” he continues. “You decided what she needed. What justice looked likefor her. You didn’t ask. You didn’t include her. You just acted.”
“Because she asked me not to act,” I explain. “And I couldn’t live with that.”
He presses his lips together. “So you decided your judgment was better than hers.”
“I was trying to help,” I argue.
He leans forward. “Were you? Or were you trying to fix something you couldn’t fix when you were fifteen?”
There it is. He figured it out.
“No you’re right, Doc,” I agree. “And I told her as much.”
“It matters, you know, that you didn’t trust her to make her own choice,” Ethan says quietly. “You can’t protect people from their own choices. You can only support them.”
I rest my chin in one palm. “So what do I do?”
He lifts an eyebrow. “What do youthinkyou should do?”
“I don’t know,” I reply. “That’s why I’m paying you four hundred dollars an hour.”
He almost smiles. “You already know what you should do. You just don’t want to do it because it requires giving up control.”
I narrow my eyes. “But what if I give up control and she still leaves?”
He shrugs ever so slightly. “Then she leaves. And you’ll survive. But at least you’ll have done the right thing.”
The right thing.
I’ve spent so long doing the strategic thing. The winning thing. The thing that gives me the upper hand.
Maybe it’s time to try somethingdifferent.
Back at the office,I call Larissa to my office.
“I need you to draw up an employment contract,” I tell her when she walks in. “Executive Director of the Rossi Foundation. Market rate. No, above market rate. Full authority, independent board reporting, budget autonomy, hiring and firing discretion. Everything.”
Larissa’s pen hovers over her notepad. “Mr. Rossi, am I correct in assuming this is for Ms. Dawson?”
“Good guess,” I reply.
“And am I also correct in assuming you two had a fight?”
