Marcus's Side
Chapter 06 - Marcus's Side
Marcus chose a hotel bar three blocks from Lumen for their first conversation after the ambush.
Neutral ground, he called it in his text.
Claire arrived at four thirty, before the after-work crowd filled the leather booths. Ice clicked in a glass behind the bar. A television above the bottles showed a baseball game with the sound off.
Marcus stood when she approached.
He had shaved. He wore the charcoal suit she bought him for their anniversary two years earlier.
“You came.”
“You asked for twenty minutes.”
He gestured toward the booth.
Claire remained standing until he sat first.
A waiter brought water. Marcus ordered whiskey and looked at her as though expecting a comment.
She gave him none.
“I’m sorry about the laptop,” he said.
“Which part?”
His hand tightened around the menu.
“That I lost control.”
“Not that you tried to remove me?”
“I thought you were shutting everyone out.”
“You called a secret vote.”
“Because talking to you stopped working.”
Claire touched the cap of her pen inside her bag but did not take it out.
“You broke a company device under records hold.”
“I didn’t know about the hold.”
“You knew enough to ask what data left the company.”
Marcus looked toward the bar.
“Richard told me after.”
“When?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“What exactly did he say?”
“That Tom was making wild claims about exports and that you were using them to retaliate.”
Claire studied his face.
Marcus had always been a poor liar when details mattered. He overexplained dates. He touched the corner of his mouth with his tongue.
Now he did neither.
Maybe because this part was true.
“Did you know Richard was sending Lumen data to Veridian?”
“No.”
“Did you receive one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars from North Gate Research?”
The whiskey arrived.
Marcus waited until the waiter left.
“It was consulting income.”
“For executive transition planning.”
His eyes flashed.
“You already had my accounts searched?”
“Company records found the invoice.”
“That firm asked me to assess operational readiness under a leadership change.”
“At Lumen.”
“They didn’t say Lumen.”
“They paid your LLC two weeks before you tried to become Lumen’s CEO.”
Marcus lifted the whiskey but did not drink.
“I should’ve disclosed it.”
“Yes.”
“I thought the board wanted an independent view.”
“Richard wanted your resentment with a professional invoice attached.”
He set the glass down too hard.
“This is what you do. You turn everything into a line item and call it truth.”
“It’s a useful habit when my husband takes secret money.”
His face changed.
Not anger this time. Shame, brief and naked.
Claire almost reached for it.
Then she remembered the laptop rising above the table.
Marcus leaned forward.
“I didn’t know about the leak. Richard wanted you out, and I knew that. I believed him when he said the company needed different leadership.”
“And you believed you should provide it.”
“I helped build the last five years.”
“You did.”
“You never say that when it matters.”
“I said it in every board evaluation. Every investor letter. Every compensation review.”
“Not at home.”
Claire turned her wedding ring once.
There was truth in that, and he knew it.
The last two years, home had become a place where they exchanged schedules and slept facing opposite walls. She had stopped bringing up Lumen because every success became comparison.
Marcus had stopped asking about anything that could make him feel smaller.
“You could’ve told me you were unhappy,” she said.
“I did.”
“You told me the board undervalued operations. You didn’t tell me you wanted my job.”
His gaze dropped.
“That sounded ugly.”
“It was ugly even when you kept it quiet.”
---
Outside, a bus sighed at the curb.
Marcus walked with her to the corner, hands in his coat pockets though the afternoon was warm.
“Are you going to call the police?”
“About the laptop?”
“About any of it.”
“Priya will make the required reports.”
He nodded slowly.
“Richard isn’t who you think he is.”
Claire stopped.
“Meaning?”
“He talks like everything is inevitable. Like he’s just explaining the future to you.”
“And you listened.”
“I did.”
“Did you give him your badge?”
Marcus looked at her.
“No.”
“Did anyone have access to it?”
“No.”
“Your badge opened legal at two thirteen in the morning three weeks ago.”
His confusion came too quickly to fake.
“I was in Milwaukee.”
“I know.”
He reached for his wallet, then remembered the badge had been surrendered.
“Claire, I never gave it to Richard.”
“Then someone copied it.”
Marcus shook his head.
“I kept it in the desk drawer at home when I traveled.”
The soon-to-be-former house.
Claire pictured the walnut desk in Marcus’s study. She had ordered it for his fortieth birthday after he complained that every room in the house looked chosen by her. He had spent an afternoon arranging pens and framed photographs, pleased to have a space that was unmistakably his.
Richard had sat in that room and copied the badge that opened Lumen’s legal archive.
The betrayal reached backward into furniture, dinners, and every evening Claire had gone upstairs early while the two men discussed strategy over bourbon.
“How often was Richard at the house?” she asked.
Marcus looked away.
“Maybe six times.”
“You said twice.”
“Twice in the last month. More before that.”
“Did he ever stay after you left?”
“Once. I had a flight. He said he wanted to finish a call.”
Claire’s pen remained inside her bag. If she took it out, the meeting would become an interview, and Marcus might retreat into the safety of his lawyer.
“You left him alone in our house.”
“He was a board member.”
“He was a guest.”
Marcus looked down at the sidewalk.
“I wanted him to think I trusted him.”
“He did. That was the useful part.”
Their alarm records would show who entered. Their cleaning service. Deliveries.
Marcus himself before leaving.
Or Richard, if Marcus had let him in.
Claire resumed walking.
“Send Priya a written statement about the badge.”
“You still don’t believe me.”
“I believe you’re frightened.”
His voice dropped.
“Are we done?”
The question meant more than the meeting.
Claire looked at the man she married, his tie slightly crooked, his whiskey untouched behind them.
She could still remember the first apartment. The plastic flowers. The pride on his face.
Memory did not make him innocent.
“I don’t know what’s left,” she said.
Her phone buzzed as she crossed the street.
Priya had obtained the preserved call logs.
May you like
Marcus and Richard had spoken or messaged four hundred and twelve times in the past year.
Nearly twice a day.
