Chapter Twenty-Seven
Colin shifted against Diwa’s shoulder. “M’sticky.”
The sheets were ruined, slick and sweat soaked through to the mattress protector, and the skin of Colin’s inner thighs was tacky where Diwa’s come had dried between rounds.
Diwa’s own stomach was crusted with it. The room smelled of the two of them so thoroughly that opening a window would have constituted an assault on the Scottish Highlands.
“Stay there,” Diwa said. “I’ll run the bath for you.”
He filled the bath, carried Colin through because his legs weren’t up to it yet, and lowered him into the water. Colin’s breath hissed between his teeth as the heat hit his arse, swollen and tender from days of use, before his body settled and his head tipped back against the rim of the bath.
Diwa knelt on the tiles and washed him. He worked a flannel across Colin’s shoulders, down the length of each arm, and over his chest. Colin watched him through half-closed eyes and said nothing.
When Diwa reached between his thighs with the flannel, careful around the soreness, Colin’s hand came up and rested on the back of his neck, his fingers light against the skin.
Diwa stayed where he was, kneeling on the cold tile, the bathwater running warm over his wrist, and didn’t move until Colin’s hand slid away.
He helped Colin out, wrapped him in the biggest towel the cottage had to offer, and sat him on the edge of the bed while he went to make tea and toast and strip the sheets. His mobile had been off, tucked in the side pocket of his holdall, and he fished it out now to send Stephen the daily update.
The screen came alive with sixty-three notifications.
Fourteen missed calls from Ezra. Nine voicemails. A wall of text messages, escalating in urgency from Call me when you get a sec through to D, pick up the fucking phone.
Diwa scrolled through them with his thumb, paused, and typed out a one-line reply to Stephen — Day 5. He’s back and doing well. — before switching the mobile off again and putting it back in the holdall.
That was just Ez being hectic. There must have been some sort of board flare-up. Ezra’s considerable talents could handle it without Diwa’s input for another few hours while Colin finished the last of his tea and let himself be driven home.
? ? ?
They were back at Ledbury Road for less than an hour when the rapping on the door started, sharp, and delivered with enough force to rattle the letterbox.
Diwa came down the stairs at a jog and opened the yellow door to find Ezra filling the frame, the airline tag from Heathrow still dangling from the carry-on in his fist.
Ezra shouldered past him into the hallway. His eyes swept the kitchen doorway, found Colin at the island, and his whole bearing shifted between one step and the next.
“Hi, Colin. Good to see you again. Glad you’re well.” He meant it, too, which made what followed worse. His head swung back to Diwa, and whatever warmth had been in his face a second ago was gone. He jerked his chin towards the study. “In there. Now. We’ve got to talk.”
Diwa glanced at Colin. Colin’s eyebrows had lifted over the rim of his mug, but he said nothing.
Diwa followed Ezra into the study. The door clicked shut behind them.
“You stupid fucker.” Ezra’s voice hit the walls. “Why don’t you ever just fucking answer your cellphone?”
Ezra’s hands were shaking. That was the thing Diwa couldn’t get past, standing in the doorway of his own study while his best friend paced the length of the room.
This was a man who had once, on a fact-finding trip to Turkmenistan, fed a strip of cured meat to the president’s pet jackal because the president had offered and refusing had not seemed like the right move.
He was a man who had renegotiated a Series C at four in the morning in a Mumbai hotel suite while running a fever of thirty-nine degrees, and suffering from a serious case of the Bombay Belly.
Ezra Holberg’s hand had held steady on both occasions.
“The former team leads filed on Tuesday. Two days after you went dark on us.”
Diwa’s stomach turned over. “The Oakland firm?”
“The Oakland firm.” Ezra lifted his head.
His eyes were red-rimmed above the dark circles, his shirt collar creased from sleeping in it on the plane.
“And they have your remediation proposal. The full document, D. They have all the details about your retroactive hazard pay plan, independently administered mental health fund, third-party audits chosen by the workers’ council. They have every word of it.”
The room contracted around him, pulling inward until there was nothing in the study but Ezra’s voice and the coldness spreading through Diwa’s chest.
“They cited it in the complaint.” Ezra’s jaw worked. “As evidence that the company’s own chairman had acknowledged systematic harm to workers and proposed a quarter-billion-dollar remediation package. They’re framing it as an internal admission, Diwa. From you, the person right at the top.”
Diwa sat down on the arm of the sofa. “Who leaked it?”
“I don’t know.” Ezra’s voice cracked, and he turned away to face the window, one hand pressing against the back of his neck.
“I don’t know who leaked it, and right now I don’t care.
The board called an emergency session, and I have been trying to reach you, calling you, texting you, leaving voicemails that I will never fucking live down, and you didn’t pick up. Not once.”
He turned back, and the sadness in his face was so naked that Diwa had to look away from it.
This was Ezra, who had sat beside him in a dorm room in Palo Alto when they were nineteen and said I think we can build something.
Who had moved his whole life to the cadence of a company they’d made together.
His name was on the incorporation documents right next to Diwa’s, because Orthos Analytics had never belonged to just one of them.
“I needed you, D.” Ezra’s voice had gone quiet. “And you weren’t there.”
Ezra’s hand gripped the back of the desk chair.
“I know you were with Colin. I understand why you couldn’t answer.
You were looking after him, and that matters.
” His knuckles whitened on the leather. “But Diwa, this is our company. This is the thing we built together, and while you were in Scotland, the board held an emergency session and they’ve voted you out. ”
It was a good thing that Diwa was already sitting, because his legs had stopped feeling like they belonged to him.
“I argued your position.” Ezra’s voice had gone hoarse.
“I told them you were temporarily unreachable because of a personal medical matter. They didn’t care.
” Ezra’s head dropped between his shoulders.
“They argued that the remediation proposal constituted an unauthorised admission of corporate liability that had materially damaged the company’s legal defence and that your absence during a crisis was dereliction of your duties as chairman.
The vote was unanimous, D. Every single one of them voted you out. ”
Ezra approached, and his hand landed on Diwa’s shoulder, squeezed once, and let go.
“The board’s settling the Oakland lawsuit on their terms,” Ezra revealed. “They plan to make a one-off payment, with no admission of liability. No third-party audit. No workers’ council involvement. They’re hollowing out your proposal.”
“How much are they handing over?”
“Twelve million.”
Diwa shook his head in disgust. Twelve million dollars, split across two hundred and forty workers who had spent years looking at material that would have broken most people inside a week.
It worked out to around fifty thousand each before legal fees.
For Orthos Analytics, that settlement was basically a rounding error on a balance sheet.
“I’m sorry, D.” Ezra’s voice cracked on the last syllable. He picked up his carry-on from the floor, slung it over one shoulder, and stood in the doorway with his hand on the frame. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
“No — thank you, Ez. For fighting my corner.”
“The good news, at least, is that they can’t touch your equity,” Ezra said.
“Your stake’s intact, your vesting schedule, all of it.
You’re worth exactly what you were worth yesterday.
You just don’t have a seat anymore. No vote.
No voice in operational decisions. No access to the boardroom…
Means fewer meetings, at least,” he joked.
“I get it, Ez.”
He stood up from the arm of the sofa and pressed himself shoulder to shoulder against Ezra, the way they’d stood at the whiteboard in Palo Alto. Ezra’s shoulder pressed back, a small show of solidarity.
“So you stay,” Diwa said. “You stay inside Orthos, and you set the path going forward. Next contract, next site, next time they’re scoping a moderation queue, you make sure someone in that room is asking the right questions. As long as you’re there, it doesn’t happen like this again.”
Ezra nodded. “Are you going to be all right?”
“I’m going to have to be.” Diwa shrugged.
“I mean, come on. I’ve still got the equity.
I’ve got the network and more capital than I know what to do with.
I built this whole thing once already. And I’ve got Colin, who’s not going to let me feel sorry for myself for too long.
I’m a builder, Ez. I’ll figure something out. ”
The words came out with the shape of his old confidence, the pitch-deck bravado that had carried him from Palo Alto to a fourteen-billion-dollar valuation.
Ezra pulled him into a hug. It was tight and brief. Ezra hooked his chin onto Diwa’s shoulder, gave him one hard clap on the back, and let go.
“We’re going to do yoga tomorrow,” Ezra said.
“Yeah.”
“And we’ll get Colin in on it.”
Diwa laughed. “Ez. We built a company together to a fucking crazy valuation.” He shook his head. “But even the two of us have no hope of getting that man onto a yoga mat.”
Diwa walked Ezra to the door. They hugged once more on the threshold, then Diwa headed down the hall to where he could hear Colin moving about in the kitchen.
Colin was at the island with a fresh mug of Barry’s in his hand. He looked up at the sound of his approach, and whatever he saw in Diwa’s face made him set the mug down without taking a sip.
Diwa crossed the kitchen and dropped onto the stool beside him, and then he kept going.
His forehead came to rest against Colin’s shoulder, and the rest of him followed in a slow controlled fold until his face was pressed into the soft cotton of Colin’s T-shirt and his hand had hooked itself loosely around Colin’s fingers.
Colin’s free hand came up and settled on the back of Diwa’s neck, his fingers light against his hairline. “You good?” Colin asked.
“Yeah.”
Colin’s thumb traced a single slow stroke against the nape of his neck. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
Colin’s hand stayed where it was. He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t ask what Ezra had wanted, or why he had come all the way from the US with no warning. He just kept stroking Diwa’s skin, and Diwa closed his eyes and let his omega hold him.
He’d tell him tomorrow, or maybe the day after. When Colin’s eyes had stopped going soft at the edges and his thighs had stopped trembling when going up the stairs.