Page 28 of First Comes Revenge

As a master of personal relations, I decide this is a good moment for calming down the troops. “It’s a down year. These things happen,” I say.

Jamie looks at me, seeming a bit surprised to hear me contribute. “In a vacuum, I would say that, but–”

“If you were in a vacuum, I don’t think you’d be saying anything except,help, get me the fuck out of here!”

Crickets.Alright. Not the time for jokes, apparently. I clear my throat. “Go on,” I say in my best “I’m a CEO” voice.

She gives me a look I’m a little too familiar with–something between drinking sour milk and noticing a toddler is smearing his own shit on the walls.

The rest of the meeting is just the staff lobbing out suggestions until Jamie goes to the whiteboard she loves so much and draws out an action plan. All the managers at the meeting leave with plans to wine, dine, and impress our existing authors. The people working under them are supposed to make extra efforts to kiss ass in all forms of communication, and so on.

None of it sounds particularly likely to move the needle, but I keep my mouth shut until it’s all over. I’m grateful to escape back to my own office where I’m not being bombarded with all the facts of our failure.

I’m surprised when Nolan knocks and asks if he can come in. He hardly ever comes to my office.

He walks up to the bookshelf and lifts one of the books there, turning it over. “Crime and Punishment?”he asks. Honestly, I didn’t even know you could read.”

“Funny,” I say, voice dry and humorless. “The guy who decorated my office picked out the books. I do have a little bookshelf at home, though.”

“Hmph,” he says, setting the book down. Usually, I’m the one in his office. It’s how he prefers things. He’s the one who is supposedly busting his ass and I’m the one who should have the time to make house calls.

“You need my help, don’t you?” I say.

He sighs. He’s still facing away from me, and I know my friend well enough to know this is hard for him. We used to be closer. Like brothers. I’d say we still are, but there’s no denying work has created a rift between us that has only been growing with time and with the increasing stress Landmark is putting on us. “I don’t know what your deal has been these past few months, but yes, I need you to be the old Jameson again. Do whatever magic it is you do with our authors. Find some diamonds in the rough for us again. I don’t need a less handsome, less effective version of myself. I need you to do the weird shit you do that always seems to work. I need you to be Jameson Fucking Wolfe.” He finally looks up and locks eyes with me. “Don’t make me beg.”

I nod. “I was just starting to get hard at the thought, but fine. I’ll spare you the begging.”

He flashes a rare grin. “Sometimes, I’m glad you haven’t let this life beat you down.” He chuckles to himself. “God knows I have..”

“You’re not beaten down,” I say. “You’re just boring and work obsessed, like half the country.”

“I want to save our company. It’s slipping away, Jameson. I can feel it. I can’t do this on my own. I don’t even want to admit how relieved I was when I thought you had that Charli woman in the bag with the next big book. But Landmark has fucked even that up, haven’t they?”

I let out a breath. I haven’t admitted it aloud, but maybe I owe it to Nolan to be honest. “I haven’t felt the same passion for this I used to. We’ve already made fortunes. More than we can spend in a lifetime, unless we try to beat Elon in a mega yacht competition, at least. Or if we start our own spaceship company… Actually, maybe we should earn some more cash.”

Nolan is frowning straight past my attempts to lighten the mood. “What are you saying?”

I slide my tongue across my teeth. I’m not usually at a loss for words, but I’m not finding the right ones for my friend. “I’m not sure,” I say. “That’s part of it, I guess. I feel like some part of me that used to burn with never-ending energy for this stuff has dimmed or started to sputter. Some days, I have it. Some days, I don’t.”

He sits down in the chair across from my desk. Okay, it’s more like hefallsinto the chair. Seeing what my words are doing to Nolan makes me feel like shit.

“Don’t you ever look around and wonder, ‘is this it’?” I ask.

“No?”

“I mean, we’ve got money. We succeeded. So are we supposed to… what, just keep doing this until we’re too old to get out of bed in the morning? Is this really the life everybody thinks they want? Work all day. Push away anything outside work because it might interfere with our focus. Grind and grind and grind until there are so many zeroes in our bank accounts that we lose track. What kind of life is that?”

“We do it because we love it. The challenge every day. It’s the fucking challenge, man. That’s why we get out of bed–because this is hard, and we’re uniquely made to do it better than anybody else. It’s like art.”

I grin. “Art?”

He throws up a hand in annoyance. “What made you do it for this long, then?”

I consider. “I like that I’m good at it. Everybody always told me I was a fuck up. When we started from our apartment and got our first authors published and those first checks came in? It was like a big ‘fuck you’ to all the people who told me I’d never accomplish anything.”

“See? There’s your ‘why’.”

“And,” I continue. “I’ve very thoroughly told everybody to go fuck themselves. I’m thirty-seven. I’ve spent my adult life telling women that work comes first. I’ve always picked this over them, and I end up back at my big, empty apartment.”

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