Page 46 of Gifted & Talented

41

Meredith woke up to find Cass sitting on the edge of the bed. She couldn’t see what he was looking at—only that he was curled around himself, probably scrolling on his phone. She sat up and crept toward him, resting her chin on the edge of his shoulder. He turned and kissed her forehead and she thought, to her own massive disappointment, You don’t smell like Jamie .

From this angle, she could see there was nothing on his phone screen. He hadn’t been scrolling. He’d just been staring into space.

“You’ve been neglecting Ward,” Cass said. Meredith rolled her eyes. She’d ignored several of Ward’s calls the previous evening, mostly because she no longer knew what to say to a man who couldn’t keep his house in order.

“My father died. Ward isn’t a priority right now.”

“Meredith.” Cass turned to face her, cool air splitting them as he shifted to look her in the eye. “Ward is going to turn on you.”

Right. Well. She certainly hadn’t chosen Ward for his impressive feats of loyalty. “I see.”

Cass looked like he was contemplating what to say next. He seemed to have been thinking about it for a long time.

“Kip knows the difference between what he bought and what he brought to market,” he eventually said. “The possibility that the ax might fall on Birdsong was always a consideration.”

There it is again, thought Meredith, reminded of the partially filled Tyche

auditorium. I’m not a genius. I’m just a face. ( THIS APP WILL

MAKE YOU HAPPY AS LONG AS HAPPINESS MEANS

50 % OFF ORGANIC PEANUT BUTTER AND BOGO CONFLICT-FREE LEMONADE!

: ))

“But I don’t think he realized the extent of the data you and Ward covered up,” Cass continued, running a hand over the stubble on his cheeks. “Now that Ward’s on the record blaming you, once the article goes to print, I think Tyche’s neatest course of action will be to remove you as Birdsong’s CEO, or—” He grimaced. “ Incentivize you to step down.”

“I didn’t,” Meredith began, and stopped. She didn’t know why. She’d had every intention to keep going, to say that nothing had been covered up, to insist that this was ridiculous and that everything involved with Chirp was sound. Instead she said nothing.

“Yeah,” Cass said in apparent agreement. “Save it for Kip, or for whoever is putting out the article in Magitek . Is it the journalist you were talking to on Monday? Your ex?”

“Yes.” It stung a little more now, knowing that Jamie was done with her, that the article was going to print, that there was nothing more she could do. Well, not true, her career wasn’t necessarily dead yet. There was a long, arduous distance from an accusatory article going public and whatever burden of proof it might require for Tyche to point the finger at her alone. She could sue Jamie for libel; that would tie him up financially for long enough that nothing dire would happen to Chirp. It wasn’t ideal that Ward was turning on her, but she’d seen that coming a mile away. He’d been waffling on the whole thing for the last five years, and why shouldn’t he put some distance between his reputation and hers? She’d have done it if she had the choice, but even if she’d blamed him first, people would find some way to make it her fault regardless. She was the woman in charge. She should have known better. The woman always knows.

She felt a small deflation in her certainty then. Kip knows the difference between what he bought and what he brought to market. What Cass meant was the same thing Thayer had once told her. Kip knew that if you could be bought, you could easily be sold.

Blood in the water. She couldn’t even blame them, any of them. She knew what it was to be a shark.

“Well, get a lawyer,” Cass said reasonably. “Your ex did right by you that way, he gave you enough warning to assemble a defense. You’ve got someone in PR on staff, right? They can put together a statement for you. Tyche will release one as well, but as far as I know they aren’t aware what’s in the article yet, so you can make sure yours is ready first.”

“A lot of talk about me and mine when you were all about we and ours yesterday,” Meredith observed dully, even though that hadn’t even been true.

Cass shook his head. “I think it’s better if I use my eyes and ears at Tyche to help your defense,” he said. “I think that’s far more valuable to you right now. You’ll need someone advocating for you, trust me.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Cass sounded surprised that she’d ask, though she supposed he had a right to be. “Come on, Meredith. You know why.”

Because Kip would let her drown. Because Ward would hold her head underwater himself just to make sure she drowned alone. There were a couple of women on the Tyche board, two or three in the company’s leadership, but they didn’t like Meredith, never had, and the men found her abrasive for the mere fact of her existence—her success, which somehow took inherently from theirs.

Her father’s voice came back to her again, unhelpfully. You have to learn to play the game, Meredith. It was never enough to be smarter or better, to run farther or faster. In the end there would always be an easy victim, and in order to not become one, you had to fight alone.

“Your father’s death buys you some time,” Cass pointed out. “Nobody will blame you if you don’t mobilize right away. But Thayer Wren wasn’t universally beloved, especially near the end, and a lot of people will be plenty happy to see the billionaire’s daughter take the fall.”

Meredith thought about what Jamie had said about Wrenfare, about whoever wound up with the reins ending up with the blame for bad investments. Even Meredith could admit Wrenfare’s profits had publicly flagged over the last five years, maybe longer, though a good portion of the attention she’d paid her father’s company had been jealousy, hate-watching the performance of the thing she had wanted for herself. Oh god, and she had wanted Wrenfare! With Thayer no longer alive she could finally admit that to herself, that Wrenfare had always been the finish line. To inherit the house her father had built with his bare hands while he was still invincible to her—his real house, where his true artistry lived—had always been the dream.

When their father’s legacy crumbled in Eilidh’s hands, under the leadership of Meredith’s little sister, whom everyone liked because they had no reason to hate her, how would Meredith feel then? It would all be Eilidh’s fault, Eilidh’s doing.

Suddenly, Meredith felt a surety that she could not, would not, go down without a fight.

“ Magitek is a niche industry magazine with limited subscribers,” Mer edith reminded herself. “Nobody pays attention to it, at least not in any significant way.” Even if the article went viral, so few people would know what to make of the accusations therein that the damage would fade, like all trends faded. Cass nodded, so Meredith knew her reasoning was sound. It would be bad for a few weeks, fine, but then everyone would move on. It wasn’t the same as an investigation by the Times or the Post . “I’ll get a lawyer,” she said. “And I’ll hire a third-party PR manager. Not someone who represents Birdsong or Chirp.”

“Good idea,” Cass said.

“And at Dad’s funeral… I should look devastated, right? A total wreck.”

“Might be meme fodder,” said Cass blandly.

True. Meredith shuddered to think what they might do with her face if they could control it. If she looked vulnerable, if she looked sad, how would people puppet her, how might they put words in her mouth? “Private, then. Really private. We’ll get someone to be an insider source or something, some anonymous voice.” Probably Ryan, that lawyering son of a bitch. He’d take the payday in a second.

She turned to Cass then, realizing something. “Are you going to leave me?”

Cass looked blankly at her.

“I’m a stain on your reputation,” she said. “At least until all of this goes away.”

Cass said nothing.

“You haven’t even asked me why,” Meredith realized with a bitter laugh.

“I don’t have to.” His voice was characteristically calm, the way it always was. “Everyone fakes it until they make it. Your data was always too perfect, it skewed impossible right from the start, but what you created is profitable. It made us a lot of money. We recouped our investment the moment you said yes to the partnership with Demeter.” Corporate sleaze, said Jamie in her head. Jesus, Meredith, you sold out, it’s all over you. “Mer, by any corporate measure you’ve already succeeded. The job is high risk, and there are always losses. All things considered, yours isn’t that bad. Assuming you don’t go to prison for fraud.”

“Ha,” said Meredith, dully.

“You won’t,” Cass assured her. “A good lawyer will make a good deal. You get what you pay for when it comes to defense attorneys, but you’ve got the money, especially now. Tyche will make sure the article gets enough holes poked in it that nobody takes it seriously, you’ll do what you can, then eventually this will all go away and you’ll rebrand and move on to your next idea. That’s what geniuses in this industry do. It’s what Kip did, it’s what Thayer did, and it’s what you’ll do.” He sounded emphatic, devoutly capitalist, like reciting a childhood prayer by heart.

“Cass,” said Meredith, “I invented a way for Tyche to make more money off people who just wanted to be happy. I not only said yes, I manipulated the data to make sure it would happen.”

“You invented a product that sold for a lot of money because everyone could see the value in its success,” Cass corrected, or maybe paraphrased. “I don’t need to ask why you said yes, Mer, because I make my living in this industry too. Philanthropy for the sake of philanthropy doesn’t pay the bills. It’s about compromise—getting to do a little more of what you want each time you play the game correctly. You think corporate operations is what I dreamed about doing as a little boy?”

Meredith hadn’t the faintest clue what Cass dreamed about. She had never considered the possibility that once upon a time, he had been innocent or young. “You still want to marry me? I’m telling you explicitly that I’m a criminal.”

“Mer, listen to me when I tell you this,” said Cass. “I already knew you were lying about something. Whether or not that’s a crime depends on you.”

Meredith wanted to laugh or something, maybe throw up.

“I’m going to spend my life with a man who loves me because I’m a bad person,” she informed the air. “And Dad, you said it couldn’t be done!”

“Look, maybe you need a minute to yourself.” Cass rose to his feet, wiping his hands on the tops of his thighs like there was grime on them, probably her corporate sleaze. “And by the way, I don’t love you because you’re a bad person. I love you, and you’re a person. If I were in your position I’d have done the same thing. It’s not easy, and not everybody gets it. You climb every step of this tower and then you lock yourself inside—because this is it, Meredith. This is the top, and there’s no other way to make it. It might be lonely once you get here, but nobody chooses it for the company. They choose it for the view.”

He leaned forward and gripped the back of her head with one strong hand, pulling her forward to press his lips to her hair. “Meredith Wren, you’re a fucking genius,” he said. “You don’t have to be anything else.”

Like a good person or a fair person or a person that Jamie Ammar could possibly love.

She nodded and didn’t say anything. Cass grabbed a pair of navy joggers, some socks, and she watched him until something occurred to her.

“Do you know what Wrenfare was working on?” she asked, and Cass looked up with a blankness, bemusement. “The talk of lawsuits, the bad investment rumors,” she explained, and he nodded with delayed recognition. “I never wanted to look into the details of my father’s work before, but…”

She trailed off, and the look Cass gave her was more pitying than she expected.

“As far as anyone at Tyche can say, a lot of what seemed to be killing Wrenfare was the culture—I can’t comment on that, I wouldn’t know how true those rumors were. But on the product side there were just too many big ideas, a lack of corporate focus. Expensive stuff, you know, space race, deep sea shit, VR. And there was also—” He stopped.

“What?”

Cass shook himself. “A neuromantic chip,” he said. “That was one of the things they were rumored to be working on.”

Meredith blinked. “What?”

“A chip,” Cass repeated. “Something to help with neurological disorders, schizophrenia, that kind of thing. About a month ago your dad was in talks to buy a start-up that was in direct competition with—”

“Chirp,” Meredith supplied, mainly so Cass didn’t have to.

Your product, Thayer said in her head, is unsound.

Your idea won’t work, a seventeen-year-old version of me reminded Meredith in her head. If you really want it to work it’s gotta be from—I don’t know, fucking inside the brain or some shit, not subcutaneous. That shit won’t stick.

Cass looked at her with pity, like he was throwing dirt on her open grave.

“Mer,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She forced brightness into her voice. “Do you know the name of the start-up?”

Cass shook his head. “Some Berkeley technomancy grads were shopping the concept around for funding. It crossed Kip’s desk because they’d sold to Tyche in the past.” Something tore inside Meredith’s chest; a small thing, like an artery. “It’s proprietary, so we weren’t able to vet much. A generic name, probably a shell corporation.”

“Ah. Did the sale go through?”

“I don’t think it was finalized or we’d have heard about it, so either Thayer passed or it’s still on the table.”

“So then it’s Eilidh’s problem now,” Meredith murmured to herself, wondering what her sister would do with the opportunity to compete with her—or destroy her. What she would do to Eilidh if the tables were turned.

Cass shrugged again, pulling on his sweatpants. “Maybe. Maybe not.” When he was dressed, he put a hand on the doorknob and then stopped, turning over his shoulder to face her. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Just gonna call a lawyer, get stuff together.”

Cass nodded. “Okay. I love you.”

“Love you.” Meredith waited until he was gone, then she looked down at her phone screen. She selected my contact file and typed in a message.

You fucking bitch , she said. She thought about my yearbook quote, the fact that it was Dumas, from our favorite revenge story. How long did you plan this?

But like I said, I was in the woods, so I couldn’t respond.