Page 43 of The Game

“Adam!” he says. “To what do I owe the honor of a call on the weekend?”

“I know you’re in the office, asshole.”

“I’m in the home office, yeah,” he says, chuckling.

“And Jo?”

“Korea. Is she ever anywhere else?”

“Didn’t you kickstart all this interest in her company?”

“I am not taking any credit for it. It’s all her. So what if the people at Samsung are in love with her? Although they’re more enamored with Des if I’m being honest.”

“Des?”

“Her number two. He’s a great tech guy.”

“I called for some advice, actually.”

“Excellent. No one wants to listen to what I think about things in the business at the moment, so it’s a welcome change.”

I find that hard to believe. “Well, I got involved in an actual fight last night. Anna’s ex-boyfriend went after her at an event we were attending …”

“Wait. Like on the street? What the hell, Adam?” His fingers tap away on his keyboard.

A sigh seeps out while he searches online. He lets out a low whistle. “These pictures are … hang on, I’ve got a video.”

Oh dear, I couldn’t bring myself to watch the whole thing.

He starts to laugh. “He didn’t stand a chance! The rage on your face is priceless. He went down like a sack of potatoes.”

I growl down the phone. I don’t want to be praised for decking some guy. I can just imagine my mother’s views if she thought I was involved in anactualfight. And God, I hope this little gem doesn’t reach the far corners of bumfuck nowhere. I clench and unclench my fist. It was strangely satisfying taking Arty Maroz down.

“I sounded off to Carly about what Anna puts up with, and she’s suggested she could try and spin the media a bit. Talk about predators and widen it out into how women are treated more generally, how they’re subjected to more abuse online than men … all that stuff.”

“Are you comfortable with that?” Janus says. His chair rolls back and footsteps echo across the floor.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting a double espresso. This feels like a caffeine kind of conversation.” I hear the clinking of cups and beans being ground in the background. “Jo would love you forever.”

“What? Why?”

“She’s vitriolic about how women are judged in business. You can imagine what it was like for her starting out. A petite redhead in kickass clothing? No one treated her seriously. She had to dress completely differently.” He chuckles.

“What’s funny about that?”

“When I first met her, she was all dressed up in an executive suit. I made some assumptions and, as you can probably guess, that didn’t go well for me. When I met her later in what she normally wears, it kind of blew me away.”

My mind swings back to Susie in her dungarees with dreadlocks begging on the street. How adamant she was that she was never working for anothercompany. Did no one take her seriously, either? Or maybe something worse? Goddammit. This stuff is terrible …

“It makes me furious that anyone has to put up with this kind of bullshit.”

“I could never step out that far,” Janus says ruefully. “That’s a terrible thing to say, but my board of investors would flip … They’re all super cautious … they don’t want anything that would rock the boat with the company or its valuation. But you could certainly do it …”

“It could all blow up in my face.”

“Carly will make sure it doesn’t. She’s the best.”

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