The reception area hushed as Evan stepped out of the elevator. No stopping at the second floor this time. Today, he was at the top. Everyone stared. That was okay. Today was about presentation, and presentation is everything. His suit was so black it seemed to pull all the light out of the room, so sharply tailored it was practically anatomical, from the structured wide shoulder down to the taper at the ankle. He was in better shape than anyone else in this company, and the suit was designed to show it.

Not a hair out of place. Skin fresh as a newly-opened rose petal. Pulses quickened as he strode through the hall.

They always noticed the clothes. Always the clothes, maybe the smile. Never the eyes. Don’t look me in the eye, said his cold and baleful stare. Only the slight redness of the veins in the corner of his eyes would give away the fact that he had not slept at all last night. That in fact he had worked in front of the laptop until the sun began peeking in through his window.

As a method of trying to get Simon out of his mind, work sucked, but it did pass the time.

I hope he’s not here. Please don’t be here.

He had thought about Simon all night. The hurt, the anger he’d seen. Why shouldn’t Simon be hurt? Evan had totally betrayed him. Even if it was from the right motives, that didn’t make it better. Then he would blink and realize the laptop was still in front of him, the presentation still not finished, and he would get back to work, at least until time for another cup of coffee, another shake of the head, another lapse into thinking about how bad he felt.

It didn’t matter what the Board wanted to see. Archie could object all he wanted. The original idea of digitizing the department was a good one. It would save the company money, and be a lot more useful than setting all the files on fire, Archie’s idea.

Who better to help with that digitization, than Simon?

Call it a parting gift. A consolation prize. I can’t have you as a boyfriend, but this project is going to take years, and if I can get them to put you in charge of it, you’ll have job security, and they’ll have to see how much benefit you’ll bring.

Who was Archie to complain about that? Sure, his intention might have been for Evan to suggest firing Simon, but this was a better idea. And now, thanks to a short, two-word email he’d sent to Archie in the middle of the night (it’s over) his uncle knew that he had totally capitulated.

He might as well have emailed you win. Archie certainly looked pleased. Evan entered the conference room on the top floor, greeted by eager smiles. The warmest damn reception he’d ever had at Cray Reliable. Handshakes, pats on the shoulder, encouragement. Where were all you people when I was wrecking my life?

Archie looked proudest of all. He ensnared Evan’s hand in his iron grip, and pulled him close. “I got your email,” he whispered. “I’m glad you made the right choice.”

“I had a choice?” Evan whispered back.

A quiet laugh. “Let bygones be bygones, Evan. You’re about to join the big boys’ club.”

“So what’s this presentation about?” asked one of the old men at the end of the table. “I’ve got my tee time at 9.”

“Be patient, Reynolds,” said Uncle Archie. “Our young man is going to do us proud. But we have one more guest we’re waiting for.”

He said it so portentously that Evan peered at him, raising an eyebrow. Then the door opened, and Simon walked in.

His chin was high, his step assured. Oh god, he’s gorgeous, why did I do it, why did I make such a fucking mistake with my life? It was impossible to look at him without heartache. He didn’t even glance at Evan, though. He simply went to one of the chairs and was seated.

He thinks this is it. He thinks he’s going to be fired.

There was a weariness in Simon’s eyes, which were fixed forward, incurious about the people around him. Evan got the feeling that he too had been up all night, although unlike Evan, he hadn’t dosed himself with eyedrops to look more alert.

Archie strode to the front of the room. “I’m glad you all could make it today. I’m especially pleased at the reason you’ve gathered. Cray Reliable has always been, first and foremost, about family. When my brother and I started the company, it was in a tiny little corner of our father’s building here, and he couldn’t understand for the life of him why we didn’t want to continue the mining business.”

It was a speech Evan had heard a thousand times before. There was even a version of it said over the Thanksgiving turkey when they all got together as a family. Evan shot a look at Simon, but Simon wasn’t looking back. This wasn’t the time for sympathetic eye-rolling.

I lost so much when I gave you up. I want to be over there with you, I want to be nudging you with my elbow during this fucking speech, letting you know I hate it too. Don’t you see, though, that I had to do it? I had to save you?

“The day we took over the entire building, our father met us at the front door and handed over the keys. A symbolic gesture, but one that always meant something to me. One day, I hope to hand these keys down to my own sons, Ash and Callum…and now to Evan, as well.

“Many of you remember Evan as a young hellion, but I’ve always known he had potential, since he was a small boy.”

Bullshit! Evan thought. You always hated me!

“We have been so glad to have him here, working with us, and this presentation is, for him, a first real step into taking charge of the company, along with his cousins. Gentlemen, I present to you the next generation of Cray Reliable: Evan Cray.”

Mild applause from old, dry hands.

Evan’s throat was a desert. Simon still would not look at him. He stared straight ahead, at the screen at one end of the room. Please forgive me, Evan thought.

He plugged his laptop into the projector, then walked up to the screen, and used the small remote to bring up his first slide.

“My father—”

The words would hardly come out. It felt like all the air in the room had vanished, replaced by dead vacuum. All those eyes staring at him. Judging him. All the eyes except Simon’s.

He took a sip of water and tried again.

“My father was an inventor. He respected the human mind above all other things. The smartest man I ever knew. The only person I ever knew who took real pleasure in the fact that things break. Nothing made him happier than when something would go wrong, because then, there was a problem to solve. He wasn’t always happy with the solution, but those solutions made our company what it is today. His tireless effort allowed me opportunities some people can only imagine. I’m not saying I made the most of those opportunities, but I plan to make amends for that.”

His eyes swept the room. “My father respected memory. It was easy to think of him as an absent-minded professor, forgetting his socks, leaving the stove on, causing mayhem because his head was in the clouds. But he could quote chapter and verse of any of those old electrical code books he collected, he could close his eyes and describe every inch of every design he had ever made.

“I didn’t value that when he was alive. To me, he was always this strange old man whose attention I wanted, but I didn’t know how to get. I guess I wasn’t as interesting as circuitry or a faulty switch. I didn’t understand that when he would close his eyes and talk, his fingers tracing the invisible shape of his designs, that he was trying to be close to me.”

Uncomfortable stirring from the room now. Nobody had come for Evan’s reminiscences. He didn’t care.

He pressed the button, and it brought up a slide showing a map of the record room.

“My father saw a problem: How do we organize the collective knowledge of the company? How do we create the company’s memory? In his vision, it would need to be encyclopedic, like his own. It would have to contain everything, all in one place. It would have to be organized in a way that you could understand…even if you had to study a while to understand it.”

Archie was giving him a bland look, as though he were not listening at all. The rest of the Board seemed disturbed, like they found all this preamble tedious. But Evan had practiced it all night, and he felt like he was doing pretty well.

“Speed it up, boy,” said the man who had complained about his tee time.

“Give him a chance,” said Archie, in a flat voice.

Evan’s throat was dry again, and he took another sip of water. He could feel his pulse in his throat. He glanced at Simon, who was at least showing interest now, even if he wasn’t making eye contact with Evan. He was staring at the screen, as though studying the chart of where all the records were. He didn’t look hurt this morning. He looked…vengeful. Evan began to worry.

“All right,” he said. “Next slide. My father’s vision didn’t include computers, because he hated—”

He was interrupted by laughter. “What?” he said, but they weren’t looking at him, they were looking at the screen behind him.

Oh hell, what’s wrong?

He turned around.

That wasn’t his slide. It was a chart, showing declining sales of electrical fittings over the past three quarters.

“I’m…I’m sorry, I don’t know how that got in there,” he said.

“What’s going on here, Evan?” asked Archie.

He pressed the button again. There was his next slide, a picture of a happy office full of computers. “Sorry about that. Where was I? Oh, my dad. So my dad hated computers, but I think there’s a way to respect his opinion, and save the company quite a bit of money. How much money, you may ask? Well, if you’ll look at this next slide—”

The room gasped, and Evan’s heart sank. He didn’t want to turn around. He didn’t want to see what was on the screen.

But he looked.

It was a chart of how much cash the company had on hand per quarter…and it was dropping even more sharply than the sales.

“What is this, Archibald?” said one of the Board. “These aren’t the figures you showed us at the quarterly meeting.”

“Evan, what the hell are you doing?” said Archie, his voice venomous.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t put that there. Someone…someone must have interfered with my presentation.”

He clicked the button again. Suddenly, the chart looked more optimistic: A sudden capital infusion in the company, offering it enough cash to get by.

“I don’t understand,” he whispered.

The next slide was simply labeled Evan Cray Trust, a column of numbers. Dollars. It stayed steady, steady…and then suddenly plummeted.

The trust fund was almost empty.

He stepped back from the screen. “What is this?”

Archie stood up. “I need an explanation of what you’re doing, and I need it right now, Evan.”

“I don’t, I don’t—”

“I can explain it,” said Simon. Still not looking at Evan, he stood up from the conference table. He walked past, taking the remote in hand.

“My esteemed colleague Evan here was tasked with saving money by closing down the Records Department. But you know what’s wonderful about a really, really detailed company record? The way that people willingly divulge their secrets on paper, confident that no one will ever read them. Maybe it’s a salve on their conscience, to confess something on paper they’d never confess to another person. Or maybe their schemes just get so complicated that they have to write them down to keep up with them.”

“Simon, what’s going on?” Evan whispered.

Simon ignored him. “Cray Reliable is in a shrinking market. Its inventions and patents are slowly running out, and our competitors overseas can make similar products for pennies on the dollar. This isn’t news to anyone in the room. What might be news is that this prompted Archibald Cray to make some very, very risky investments. Investments he then tried to hide in paperwork.”

Evan whispered, “Investments and holdings, subbasement aisle 3, cabinets 12-20.”

Simon looked surprised. “Exactly. He thought no one would ever look for them…because this is the twenty-first century, and nobody cares about paper anymore. But he had to replace the money. He had to find a source of cash that no one would ask about, fast.”

“My…trust fund?” asked Evan.

Pressing the button brought up the next slide, and there was a gasp. Lists of transactions, withdrawals from the trust matching deposits into the company’s many, many accounts.

“He was stealing from you,” Simon said. “It’s all there, downstairs, in black and white. He was running the company into the ground, and needed money, so he stole it out of your trust fund.”

Realization shook Evan. He turned to Archie. “That’s why you cut off my trust fund? It had nothing to do with me being irresponsible! You had just used it up, and didn’t want anyone to know!”

“That money was wasted on you!” shouted Archie, the first time he had ever heard his uncle shout. “I built this company from nothing—from nothing! Who had more of a right to that money? The man who was trying to keep this company surviving, or a lazy piece of shit who wouldn’t tie his own shoes without help? You were going to squander every penny of it, on drugs, on drink, on nothing!”

“On my son,” said Evan. “I spent a good bit of it on my son.”

A ripple went through the room. Nobody knew how to deal with that.

“Yes. I have a child. Bad ol’ irresponsible Evan has been supporting his son with the trust fund money, trying to do the right thing, and trying like hell to keep him away from you, Uncle Archie. And now everyone can understand why. You stole from me. This was my money…my dad’s money.”

“Funny you should mention your dad’s money,” said Simon. “I don’t know all the details—I was really focused on your trust fund when I was doing the research—but it looks like Archie has been doing this a long, long time. Even while your father was alive. I thought your dad was bad with money because his head was so full of other ideas. He’d write bad checks, have his power shut off…which is really weird for a rich man who owns half a company, right? But not so weird if someone is embezzling his money, to make up for his risky bets. Someone like Archie.”

Evan whirled towards Archie, his hands now in fists. “Are you fucking kidding me? It’s bad enough that you steal from me…but from your own brother?”

Archie had nothing to say. He sat back down in his chair, while the Board glared at him.

“Not to be selfish and put the spotlight on myself,” said Simon, “but Evan, did it strike you as strange that Archie would send you down to my department, with the agenda of shutting it down and getting rid of me?”

“I thought he was doing it as a punishment. Or, you know, more charitably, that he thought you would be a good influence on me, like you were on my dad. He really respected you, my dad did.”

Simon’s hand touched Evan’s arm, and it was like electricity.

“The timing is interesting,” said Simon. “The trust fund is depleted. The proof is down in the records. It would only be a matter of time until someone noticed…”

“Unless the guy who understood the records was fired, and replaced by stupid ol’ irresponsible me,” said Evan.

“What Archie wasn’t counting on, though, was that you weren’t stupid at all. That in fact you were great, and honest, and good-hearted, and… Oh, shit, I wasn’t going to do this in front of people.” Tears welled in Simon’s eyes. “What he wasn’t counting on is that I would fall in love with you, and would do anything to keep you. I would burn this company to the ground if it meant I could spend one more minute with you, with none of this tension between us, none of the pain.”

Evan was speechless. He reached for Simon’s hand. There were no words. There were no words in the world.

But Simon had already turned back to Archie. “The work’s not done yet. There’s a lot more to research. But I’ve sent the files I’ve found so far, to the state attorney general. I’m sure you’ll be hearing more from them.”

“This is an outrage!” said Archie. “You are destroying everything your father worked for, Evan! Every second of his life was devoted to this company!”

“You were willing to destroy my life, to keep up the illusion that you were a real businessman,” said Evan. “You didn’t care if my heart broke, if I was alone, if I thought of myself as the biggest fucking failure in the world. Fuck you, Archie.”

As the boardroom exploded with accusations and anger, Simon put his arm around Evan’s shoulders, and Evan slid his hand around Simon’s waist, pulling him close.

“That was a really good show,” said Evan.

“Well, I figured the breakup didn’t really count if it was under duress. If you’re going to break up with me, you’re going to have to do it while you’re not under the influence of your uncle.”

Evan nuzzled Simon’s ear. He didn’t care about all the shouting men in the room. “But how did you sneak all those slides into my presentation?”

“Dude, you’re as bad as your dad. You’ve got to pick something better than password for your laptop’s password.”