I don’t want Ellie to know just how pissed off I am. I try to hold it back. I try to push it somewhere dark within me - to that same deep place where I put all of my dark thoughts. But I’m only partly successful. Robert Warrenhouse pulling out of Owl is one of the biggest blows I’ve ever suffered. It’s nearly as horrible as Blake pulling out in the first place. But what makes this even more painful is that we finally had a chance. We had an opportunity to get back to where we were. My mind shifts to all of those employees who work for me. What will they do if Owl goes under? How will they find new jobs? They’ll have to move somewhere else. They’ll have to take their kids out of school. Their whole lives will be destroyed. And for what? What exactly did I do wrong? I stood up to Blake for what he did to Ellie; and I stood up for Ellie’s account of what Tom did to Caroline.

Even though all of this happened because Ellie is in my life, I don’t blame her. Not one bit. If it weren’t for her my life wouldn’t be nearly as great now, despite all this shit that I’m dealing with. No. She put my life in perspective. Suddenly, I know what’s important. I know what’s valuable. Before, I was this successful playboy without much to show for anything. I knew how to have a good time, but that was pretty much it. Now, it feels like I have a family again.

I glance over at Ellie out of the corner of my eye as I drive to the hotel. I want to go back to New York, back to work. But, for what? What do I even have to go back to? Robert Warrenhouse was my last shot. My last opportunity. No other single investor has that much money to play around with and institutional investors aren’t going to touch Owl with a hundred-mile pole, if there were such a thing. No, without a huge infusion of cash, Owl is pretty much over. The Board of Directors will want my head on a spike to save face in front of the shareholders and they’re entitled to it. They’ll give me a generous severance package, of course, and appoint someone else as CEO. That person will do his or her best to save Owl, but without going into advertising and trying to save the company by having it make money somehow, and not just be a free service, there won’t be much anyone will be able to do. The only thing I don’t know is exactly how long we will hold on. Will it be a slow decline into obsolescence like what happened to America Online or will we fall straight down to the bottom in a fiery crash like MySpace?

“Are you okay?” Ellie asks, putting my hand over hers.

I shrug and force a smile. My thoughts are running a mile a minute, one over another. One moment, I want to scream and punch someone for what Blake and Robert have done to me and the next, all I can think about is all the people who work for me and what they’re going to do next. I will still have money. Not as much as before, not a billionaire anymore. But, who cares? I don’t live on a salary of eighty thousand dollars a year like many of my engineers. And then there are the secretaries and the lower-grade employees. They are single mothers and fathers who support their kids on salaries as small as thirty or forty thousand a year. What the hell are they going to do? How much will all of this affect them? When this thought pops into my head, that’s when my disappointment and hopelessness really turns into anger and fury. Who the hell does Blake think he is for doing what he’s doing to Owl? And it’s all because he had his pride hurt a little bit. He did something wrong and a girl stood up to him. All because of that, he’s acting like the douche that I should’ve known him to be all along.

“Fuck him,” I say, gritting through my teeth.

“What?”

I didn’t realize that that came out aloud. But if I can’t talk about this with Ellie, who can I talk about this with?

“I’m just so pissed at Blake. And Robert,” I say. “I mean, less so Robert, I guess. Since he didn’t really sign anything and his lawyers didn’t go over any of Owl’s internal documents yet. But, still. He’s just pulling out because he’s taking Tom’s side. And for what? Why the hell is he taking Tom’s side? What a dick.”

“I know, right? I mean, I thought that they would be happy that they found out the truth about who Tom was before their daughter married him. But I guess not.”

“The thing is that some people don’t want to know the truth. They just want to live in their little bubble. They’d rather pretend that everything is okay than come face to face with facts.”

Ellie nods and a tear rolls down her cheek.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“I’m just sad. I mean, you didn’t know Tom. But there was a lot of good about him. Of course, what he did is unforgivable. But I just don’t even understand how the hell it happened. Or why. I mean, we were friends for a very long time. We were really close. And he never showed himself to be someone who is capable of anything like this.”

“Some people just snap, I guess,” I say. “I never thought Blake would do anything like what he did on the yacht either.”

She nods. Little does she know, but I know exactly what she’s feeling right now. I knew Blake was a bit of a chauvinist and an asshole, but I had no idea he was capable of anything that he did on the yacht with Ellie. He took it too far, and finding out something like that about your friend is devastating. To say the least.

“So, what are we going to do now?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I say, pulling into the parking lot. “Get some sleep, I guess.”

“Sleep sounds like heaven,” Ellie says.

I thought this would be a hotel, but it’s actually an inn. The Poplar Inn, to be exact. It has a white picket fence, a wraparound porch, and thick pine trees all around. An older woman comes out to greet us as soon as we come up onto the porch. She welcomes us in and tells us what time we can expect breakfast the following morning.