Chapter Fifteen
The hotdogs were, against all reasonable expectation, fantastic.
They’d come out of a packet that Diwa had pulled out from the back of the freezer with the reverence of a man producing a first edition Tolkien. Colin had three on his plate alongside another big mound of garlic rice and a fried egg.
Diwa was at the hob plating up a fourth hotdog for Ezra, who was hunched over his mobile at the far end of the island with his reading glasses on, scrolling through emails.
“She’s in Singapore,” Ezra said, not looking up. “Family holiday. Her kids are seven and four. Don’t lead with the FT. Don’t mention the board letter. And for the love of God, D, do not open with a joke.”
“I’m not going to open with a joke.”
“You opened with a joke last time and she hung up on you.”
“It was a good joke.”
“It was a joke about convertible notes at seven in the morning her time, and she’d been on a red-eye from Bangalore.
” Ezra set his mobile down and accepted the plate Diwa slid across the marble.
He picked up a hotdog with his fingers, bit the end off, and kept talking while he chewed.
“Start with the Q2 projections. She respects numbers. Let her bring up the article. If she doesn’t bring it up, you don’t bring it up.
If she does bring it up, you listen before you talk, and then you fucking grovel. Can you do that?”
“I founded a fourteen-billion-dollar company, Ez.”
Colin’s tea went down the wrong way. He set the mug down and pressed the back of his wrist to his mouth, eyes streaming, while fourteen billion rattled around inside his skull like a marble in a tin.
He’d known Diwa had money. He’d clocked the house.
But fourteen billion was a different postcode from rich.
Fourteen billion was a different planet.
Ezra leaned across and thumped him twice between the shoulder blades without looking away from Diwa. “Yeah. Nice. Now d’you think you can get through a twenty-minute call without causing a board revolt that’ll sink the valuation fifteen percent in one day?”
“‘Course.”
Ezra didn’t look like he believed Diwa.
Diwa set his own plate down and pulled his mobile out, while Ezra leaned across and tapped a contact. The dial tone pulsed twice through the speaker before a woman’s clipped voice came through the line.
“Diwa,” her voice was frosty.
“Adhya, hi! Thanks for picking up. I know you’re with the family, and I really appreciate you making time for this.”
Diwa’s drawl was gone as he spoke. The easy Californian stretch that pulled every sentence a syllable longer than it needed to be, the yeah? tags, the over-explaining that looped back on itself three times before arriving at the point. All of it had dropped away in the space of a single sentence.
Adhya was already talking. Colin caught fragments: loss ratios, reputational exposure, a reference to something called a Section 16 filing that meant nothing to him but made Diwa visibly tense.
Diwa came back at her without pausing to breathe, citing a flurry of numbers while keeping his sentences short and definitive.
“The board’s position is that we ride this out,” Adhya said.
“Kenji’s modelled the reputational half-life on the piece, and his view is that we’re looking at a sixty-day cycle before the news environment resets.
Michael agrees. Their recommendation is that we hold the current comms strategy and let it decay. ”
“It won’t blow over. The piece names three former team leads by role.
Two of them are talking to a plaintiff’s firm in Oakland.
If they file, and they will file, the decay model is worthless because you’re not dealing with a news cycle anymore, you’re dealing with discovery.
Kenji’s model doesn’t account for litigation risk because Kenji’s a quant, not a lawyer, and I say that with enormous respect for Kenji. ”
Adhya didn’t respond immediately. Colin heard something in the background on her end, a child’s voice, high and distant, and the click of a door being shut.
“What are you proposing?”
“That we actually do things right. We provide a proactive remediation package. Retroactive hazard pay for every content moderator who worked a Tier Three queue. Independently administered mental health fund, not in-house, not through People and Culture, because our credibility on that is zero. And a public commitment to third-party auditing of working conditions across all contract sites, with the audit firm chosen by the workers’ council, not by us. ”
“The board won’t go for the audit provision. You know that.”
“Then I’ll go to the board myself and explain that the alternative is a courtroom in California where a jury gets to watch eight hours of what our workers watched, and then gets asked whether three dollars an hour was a fair price for it.
” His voice had gone quieter. “I’ve seen the material myself, Adhya.
None of them have. That’s going to matter when this goes public, and it is going to go public. ”
The kitchen was very quiet. Ezra had stopped chewing and was watching Diwa with his chin resting on his fist.
Colin took in the white-knuckled grip on the edge of the island where the alpha’s free hand had pinned itself. He was fighting properly for his lot, even with the board against him and with a quarter-billion on the line.
Just half an hour ago this same lad had been bouncing round the kitchen offering him a Tender Juicy hotdog, absolutely delighted with himself when Colin voiced his grudging approval, and Colin wanted that face back.
The other half of that hotdog was still on Colin’s plate.
He speared it through the middle and lifted it, then met Diwa’s eyes across the island.
He parted his lips around the end of it and took the whole length into his mouth, his gaze locked on the alpha’s the entire way down.
He paused. Drew back, and sank his teeth into the tip, taking a tiny bite off it.
Diwa’s eyes went wide and his thighs pressed together. His sentence about the Manila team faltered. He clamped his free hand over his mouth and made a strangled noise into his palm that could have passed, generously, for a cough.
“Sorry, Adhya. I’ve got something in my throat, hold on.” Diwa’s shoulders were shaking and his eyes were streaming. He turned ninety degrees from the island, walked three steps to the window, and stood with his back to Colin.
The tea towel came off his shoulder mid-stride.
It crossed the island in a clean overhand throw and caught Colin square in the ear.
Colin finished off his hotdog. From the window, Diwa managed: “Sorry. Yes, so the proposal on retroactive hazard pay would be administered through an independent third-party administrator, decoupled from internal payroll and reporting directly to the workers’ council rather than the board. ”
Ezra’s eyes rolled ceilingward and stayed there.
“Send me the remediation proposal by end of day,” Adhya said, after a pause. “I’ll look it over with Michael before I take it to the full board. No promises.”
“That’s all I’m asking. Thank you, Adhya. Enjoy Singapore. Give the kids my best.”
The line went dead. Ezra let out a long breath through his nose, picked up his fork, and went back to his hotdog as though the last five minutes hadn’t happened.
Colin ate his breakfast and watched the two of them not speak.
Ezra broke first, glancing down at his plate.
“You know what that remediation package costs, right? Retroactive hazard pay alone, across every Tier Three queue, every contract site, you’re looking at north of two hundred million.
The mental health fund, if it’s independently administered the way you want it, that’s another forty to sixty per year, recurring.
The audit provision is the cheap part, and even that’s going to run eight figures once the workers’ council picks a firm.
” He jabbed a finger at Diwa. “That’s a quarter-billion dollar hit to the balance sheet before the plaintiffs’ lawyers even file.
Revenue takes a knock. Investor returns take a knock. The share price’ll sink.”
“It’s the least we can do, Ez,” Diwa insisted. “You didn’t see what I saw in that room. Nobody should have to see it, and two hundred and forty people looked at it every day for three dollars an hour because I signed off on a spreadsheet.”
Ezra rubbed both hands over his face, dragging his fingers through his hair, and let out a sharp breath.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
Colin checked the clock above the door. It was already a quarter past eight. His first job was a deep clean in Bayswater at nine, and the 94 would take him twenty minutes if the traffic on Westbourne Grove behaved itself, which it wouldn’t.
He stood, carried his plate to the sink, and rinsed it under the tap. His bag was by the door where he’d left it the night before. He shrugged his jacket on, looped the strap over his shoulder, and came back round to where Diwa was still sitting at the island.
Diwa looked up at him, and Colin leaned down and pressed his mouth to the side of Diwa’s face, just above the jaw. Diwa went still under the kiss, and the warm smell of him came through one last time before Colin straightened.
“You did well,” he said.
He left before Diwa could answer, pulling the yellow door shut behind him. The morning air off Ledbury Road was cold against his face, and he walked towards the bus stop with his hands in his pockets.