Chapter 7: The Complaint

Elliot took the phone out of my hand and read it twice.

He did not swear.

He sat on the edge of the rug in last night's trousers, and he went completely still.

"Judith," he said.

"Who is Judith?"

"The chair of my board. My first investor."

He buttoned a cuff.

"She's known me for twelve years, and I have never once made her open a report on me."

He stood and found his shirt.

"I'm going to call her before she calls me," he said.

"Elliot."

"There's a way to do this that keeps your name out of it."

"I'll say I started it. That I pursued you. That you went along with it."

"No."

He stopped with one arm in a sleeve.

I stood up in his rug-wrinkled dress with my glasses in my hand.

"You don't get to write my part," I said.

"I walked into that bar. I said the room number."

"If you tell a board I was pursued, then I'm a girl things happen to, and I am done being that."

His jaw worked.

"They'll investigate you. They'll read your emails."

"Then they'll read that I'm good at my job."

He looked at me a long time.

"There's a clause in the handbook," he said finally.

"I wrote it after an agency in New York ate itself over a CEO and a junior."

"It says a founder can't supervise anyone he's involved with, and he tells the board if he is."

"And if he doesn't?"

"He loses the tie-break vote. The board runs the company for as long as it takes to decide what to do with him."

"So the report isn't about me," I said slowly. "It's about you."

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