Recognition made his face go slack, and a piece of Mallory fizzled, the whisper of hope that she was wrong. “Right.” She would have made AIM a unicorn without him. He stole that chance from her. She could never forgive him. “So this is what we’re going to do. You’re going to make a surprise announcement that you’ve become so attached to AIM that you aren’t ready to hand it over just yet. You’re going to invest so muchcapital—and I’m talking backing up a Brink’s truck—that we can cancel the direct listing without raising suspicion.”
His face transformed from that of flirtatious lover to self-preserving shark. “You don’t want that. More to the point, I don’t want that. So why would I do it?”
Mallory strengthened her resolve. “Because if you don’t, I’ll leak the error and you as the one who created it for your own financial gain. Understandable that someone of your vintage might be behind on the times, but let’s see, Uber, WeWork, ring any bells? High-powered execs forced out for fraud. At least they’re not Elizabeth Holmes, trading black turtlenecks for orange jumpsuits. Silicon Valley is not the Wild West anymore, not for something like this, not even for you. You’ll be ruined.”
“Should I even bother to deny it, or are we past that?”
Mallory hugged her arms to her chest.
“All right,” he said, “let’s do this, then. I’m not investing any more in AIM. And you aren’t leaking anything. In the game of who knows who better, I win.” He leaned in, his voice steady as he said, “Aubrey.”
Whiplash spun Mallory’s head.
“Your CTO,” Grayson said. “Apologies, yourtech genius of a CTO—as you all so often remind everyone—missed such an egregious error?”
The ice running through his veins chilled her to the bone.
“Her stellar reputation would work against her. Not such a leap to believe that Aubrey not discovering the error, not exposing it, and not fixing it, meant she was behind it. Motive, opportunity, and know-how.”
Mallory was as repulsed by him as she was in awe. A simple question, a subtle implication by someone of Grayson Fields’s stature, would be enough to crucify Aubrey in the press, across the industry, and on Wall Street. Mallory’s blackmailing attemptwas finished. She had no more cards to play. She faced him, that smug grin and those eyes that she’d once seen herself in. He believed he was smarter than everyone, that he knew best, that he knew all.
He’d better. Because if he didn’t, he’d wish he were dead.Crunch of glass, smell of wine, pooling of blood. Just like Ethan.
28
Aubrey
Sunday Evening
Three DaysAfterthe Outing
Aubrey studies the row of succulents in her apartment to choose one for Kai. That his collection is octopuses makes her smile in a way she hasn’t in a long time. She selects a cabbage-like green plant with pink tips and grabs her keys from the hook by the door. She’s meeting Kai at Ilena’s. They live on opposite sides of the Seaport, him in South Boston and her in Cambridge, and they each needed to change.
This Aubrey pays more attention to memes, if they have memes in this world. Not a single pair of skinny jeans in the closet. Instead, each hanger holds a complete outfit, labeled with “Work: Mon-Thurs, Summer,” or “Work: Fridays, Winter,” or “Saturday Casual,” or “Dinner Party,” and Aubrey is falling just a little bit in love with this world Aubrey. She slips into the “Dinner Party: Summer” full skirt and linen short-sleeved button-down and feels nothing like herself and yet everything like herself.
As she steps into the common hallway, the hair on the back of her neck rises.Ethan.Clearly visible through the building’s glass front door.
“Aubrey,” he says loudly, gesturing to the doorknob.
She doesn’t move.
This seems to surprise him, and he raps gently, adding, “Your middle name’s Katherine, right?”
“Excuse me?”
He stands her up, refuses to go with her to Ilena’s, and now turns up asking about her middle name? He didn’t even know her first name a couple of days ago.
He knocks the glass again. “Your middle name is on your website bio. But the other night, I neglected to mention mine.”
She hesitantly approaches the door, wondering what she was thinking by telling him where she lived.
“It’s Ass,” he says. “I’man ass.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Deserved, hundred percent. You should have called me on it when you emailed. It hit me after I’d already pressed Send. We had plans.”
“So that’s why you’re here? To explain? Or apologize? Because I haven’t heard either one yet.”
