The silence in the room had a texture now. Ethan stood very still. Vanessa had moved several inches closer to the wall, as though the wall might offer structural support against what was happening. The lawyer had found something important to examine in the middle distance, slightly to the left of everything.
“Ethan.” Vanessa’s voice had thinned to something barely above a whisper. “What does that mean? What does that mean for the IPO?”
He didn’t answer her. He was looking at Alexander Reed with the expression of a man doing math he does not want to finish, because he already knows the sum.
No investors.
No underwriter confidence.
No IPO.
The company he had spent six years building, the company that was supposed to go public next month and make him the kind of man who no longer had to explain himself to anyone—it was constructed on a scaffolding he had not known was scaffolding. He had thought it was architecture. He had thought it was entirely his.