10:30 AM THURSDAY
The rain drummed against Manhattan’s windows in grey sheets, a reminder that the real world still existed.
Outside, the park sat bare under the November sky. Wet pavement glistened. The dampness searched for patches of rare soil between the concrete. A quiet rebellion against the glass and steel surrounding it.
Inside the Waypoint boardroom, the air was dry. Controlled. This room had forgotten the smell of fresh air, made up for it with leather, thick carpet, polished wood. Outside, the city moved with the weight of the storm. Inside, the silence pressed in, cold and still.
This was the North Board Room.
This room was not for analysts or associates. This was where the decision-makers held court. The gods of capital.
LPs came here from state capitals, pension headquarters, Middle Eastern oases. Long flights to sit in deep leather chairs and hear the same slides, the same returns, year after year. The North Board Room existed for that show.
The only exception was when the Investment Committee gathered.
The men of IC, only men, were venerated by my colleagues. Their words parsed like scripture.
I wasn’t formally on the committee. I was the “Recommended by” signatory on the deal memo, as the deal team representative, which earned me a seat at the far end of the table. Furthest from the chairman.
This wasn’t my first IC meeting. After the first one, adrenaline and boredom in equal measure, they’d become routine. Formality.
Today felt different. A low hum in my skull. This one would define something. I sat weighed down in my chair, already exposed.
I stared down at the trees in the park, their canopies bare. Cold, wet, November. A small group hustled toward the Met, getting soaked. They looked more comfortable in the rain than I was in here.
A memory surfaced. My first IC meeting. Summer. Sunny. Pride and nerves in equal measure, but I’d earned my seat.
That was years ago.
Brian delivered most of today’s presentation. He didn’t hog the spotlight, not as much as he could have. He gave me a few slides, moments to add context after he’d delivered the main points.
We’d developed a rhythm over years. He trusted me to communicate. More benevolent than most senior MDs, he shared some of the glory, gave his subordinate face time with IC. Perform well for the demigods, cement your career.
At the head of the table sat the Chairman, our billionaire founder. When he was in town. Otherwise, a disembodied torso on a video feed.
The vice-chairman was a former Senator, ex-chair of Senate Finance Committee. Prior to that, the House Ways and Means Committee. He rarely appeared in the office, but his signature never failed to show on approval documents. His role was unclear to most of us.
Four executives filled the rest of the table. Global President, Head of Americas, General Counsel, Brian as Senior MD of Credit.
And me. Trying not to fidget.
The presentation moved methodically. Each slide clicked through with calculated talking points. I had written most of it. Approved the rest. The content I didn’t believe in, now projected on the wall.
Each slide felt like a cut. The scalpel was mine.
A dark thought surfaced: I could almost laugh. A sociopath slicing himself apart with his own memo. Absurd. Mundane. Rote. I hated every slide.
I could have killed this deal. That was within my power. Any reason to go pencils down. I knew Brian well enough to push the right buttons, make him believe we should chase something juicier. The Mikes would have followed.
I hadn’t. I’d let it get this far.
Another section of the deck came to me. My throat tightened. My voice came out muffled. The performance was slipping.
Sweat formed at the back of my neck. My stomach twisted. My legs wanted to bolt from the chair.
Why couldn’t they see it? Brian, the IC, any of them. They looked too pleased with themselves. Good stewards of capital.
Brian moved to the next section. This deal would close out Fund 9, deploy a chunk of Fund 10. The IC looked even more pleased. LPs loved seeing their money get spent. Until it didn’t come back.
Lance, Head of Americas, was already eyeing the snack table. I was trying not to look sick.
The meeting entered its tail. Brian walked through sensitivities, methodology changes. I had written detailed notes on my new model. Brian had edited them down to “pricing engine enhancements,” enough to delight IC without inviting questions.
Clever. He’d pivoted his private concerns into a selling point. A consummate professional.
Each exhibit felt like drowning.
The numbers hid false precision. That precision would generate errors. Errors that would compound into something mean. Something no downside scenario in the deck would show.
I wanted to pound the table. Throw something. Smash the silence.
The room stank. Something infected. I suspected it was me.
We can’t do this deal. It’s a setup.
But firms had stinkers all the time. Every fund deployed capital because they had to. The dirty open secret.
Maybe I just wanted to be a hero. Save Waypoint from itself.
I was swaying in my chair. Hands shoved under my thighs. Breath shallow. Muscles tight, straining, waiting.
Freeze was no longer an option.
The deck ended. Lance stood at the side table, grabbing coffee. The room waited for the formality. Signatures. Authorization.
My heart raced. Not fear. Something worse. The suffocation of waiting to speak, to tear through. I heard the hum of the air conditioning, each second stretching longer.
I knew I was going to lose. Nothing would change. But I needed to say it. One last time. To all of them.
A calmness washed through me. Rising from somewhere deeper than I knew I had. I expected bile. Tasted nothing.
A voice inside: Why are you doing this? What if you’re wrong? Is this ego? Who appointed you defender of Waypoint?
I swatted it away.
I heard my voice come out. Measured. Louder than usual.
Direct. No jargon. No doublespeak. No tiptoeing.
They froze. Eyes down the table, locked on me.
I laid out how the base case, my base case, the one Brian and I had just presented, was going to fail. I told the demigods of the Investment Committee, with algebraic certainty, that the deal they expected to print carried interest checks was built on sand.
Shut up. Sit still. You’re wrong. You know less than they do.
Something else rose louder. Integrity dies in silence.
I told them about the collateral appraisals. Overstated. The documentation gaps. Tenuous recovery rights. The cashflows that couldn’t be matched to payment history. Covenants fragmented. Diligence files missing.
I told them what I shouldn’t have said aloud: Granite wasn’t sloppy. It was engineered. Built to look perfect. A trap.
Silence.
Stares. Weighty. Pointed. Waiting for me to break.
I found myself praying. Couldn’t remember the last time I had.
More silence. Glances exchanged.
I could feel something leaving the room. Whatever had come out of me, it had caught them. For a moment. Now it was venting into vacuum.
Their eyes shifted. Faces changed. I was losing them.
And then, before I could stop it, the words came. From somewhere deep. The first time I’d heard my own voice in years.
“If we approve and sign this today, we aren’t acting as fiduciaries anymore. We’re just putting capital to work because we have to. And if that’s the case, then we should at least have the integrity to say that outright.”
A long pause.
No one yelled. No one pounded the table.
This was worse. The quiet rejection. I’d seen it before. The kind that gets processed without your involvement.
No emotional reactions. These men were too controlled, too sure of their little universes.
The space inside me collapsed. Vacuum. Implosion.
Eyes turned to Brian.
He knew I’d had doubts. He’d feel betrayed now. I’d pushed him under the bus without warning.
Brian cleared his throat. Leaned back. Gave me the faintest glance. No anger. No betrayal. The way a man brushes lint from his jacket.
“Duly noted.”
And just like that, the room shifted to pleasantries. Coffee refills. Ignoring me.
This was how every IC meeting ended. Chit-chat. Coffee. Slow exits.
My words had erupted and fallen into a void. Swallowed by the cultivated indifference of the room.
I had expected rebuttals. Threats. Brian to look at me like a traitor.
Instead, he looked at me like lint.
I was his right hand. I had blown up an IC meeting, contradicted everything we’d presented. And I was a fleeting nuisance. Had I ever been more than that?
Maybe I could have spoken in tongues, or recited Homer in the original Greek. The response would have been the same.
I poured out whatever soul I had. Received back cold nothing. Fair, perhaps. An accurate reflection of what I had inside me these days.
A panic rose. I had lived in their world long enough to believe it held meaning. Built my life around it. Its lies woven into every decision.
Now, still sitting in the North Board Room, I was already outside it. The cut was fresh. I could feel the sting.
I had lived in a universe of models and standard deviations. A hologram. They still lived in it. I was exiled now.
An intruder in a temple of false gods. And temples don’t treat intruders well.