Page 633 of Manhattan Bossholes

CAMERON

“Coffee, Cameron?”

I wordlessly shook my head at Alessandra. I’d already downed two cups; a third wasn’t going to do me any good.

I felt like I was coming down with the flu. I woke each day groggy and exhausted, and I spent my days unable to focus. It wasn’t bad enough to keep me at home, but it was enough to make me surly as fuck.

My team was assembled in the conference room, minus one very important employee, trying to brainstorm our way out of our PR nightmare. The social media response to what I referred to as “the event” in Central Park had been swift and brutal, but what was worse was our continued downward sales trend. I refused to say our “poor numbers,” because doing so would mean admitting that Veritique was once again in crisis mode—and I couldn’t blame this one on Dad.

I sighed and pushed my phone farther away from me on the conference table. Lately, it only delivered bad news.

“Let’s begin,” I said as I glanced around at the wary faces surrounding me.

The low chatter in the room died immediately.

“Who’s up first?”

Everyone shifted their attention to Glen.

“Uh, that’s my cue, I guess.” He paused to shuffle a few papers in front of him. “So, I pulled the latest numbers from our physical locations and, uh, they’re not great.”

I had to work to keep from grinding my teeth together. I already knew that fact.

“We’re still getting lookie-loos in our flagship shop, you know? Mostly tourists, and the people who aren’t addicted to social media and missed the…thing,” Glen’s expression went sheepish. “But serious buyers? Not so much. As for online sales…they’re also down. The ‘about us’ section of the website is getting the most hits, obviously looking for more information about you and…” Glen cleared his throat. “And we’re noticing trending of clicks from our main page through to our social media accounts, then rapid drop-off. A couple of scrolls and then they bounce. Sandrine can talk about what’s going on there.”

He fell back against his chair, grateful to be done speaking.

“We’ve had to do an unplanned-for social media about-face,” Sandrine said. She seemed exhausted as well. “Lucy and the team had booked out weeks’ worth of content centered around…our former campaign, which we had to scrap.” She went a shade paler. “We’ve diverted to repurposing some old content in the meantime, and we’re hoping to create behind-the-scenes images and videos from our upcoming spring campaign.” She pursed her lips together for a moment. “Now, I’m going to be honest here. We’ve discovered our old approach is no longer working. Photos of beautiful hands wearing beautiful rings is over for us. Our audience got hooked on a real love story, about real people, and now nothing else will do. At least that’s what the traffic is telling us. So, what we need to do now is agree on a different direction that caters to this new version of Veritique, for better or for worse.”

“I had an idea,” Glen said, raising his hand like a damn kindergartener.

I snorted softly to myself. Of course he did.

“I think we have the chance to turn what happened into an opportunity,” he said.

Oh, this ought to be good.

“How about we try a pivot?” he began. “We start a new campaign called ‘Breaking up is hard to do,’ where we track our fearless leader as he navigates the dating world post-CamLicity. We could go with him on dates, and have followers suggest possible matches⁠—”

“Who the hell hired you?” I interrupted him. “I’m serious. Who thought it was a good idea to add you to the team? Because all you keep delivering are strike-outs. Absolutely not, Glen.”

My outburst pulled all the air from the room. It had been a long time since I’d exploded, and clearly everyone had gotten used to the kinder, gentler Cameron O’Connor.

Well, that sucker was long gone.

I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples as everyone around me tried to be as quiet as possible.

“I think we need to do something totally unexpected,” I said. “Who’s been working on the pet products line? Maybe pictures of cute dogs in leather collars with platinum buckles will bring people back?”

“Um, that’s me,” a voice squeaked out.

I squinted at a terrified woman at the far end of the conference table.

“Do I know you?”

“No. I mean, sort of. We met on my first day,” she said quickly. She sank lower in her chair. “I’m Becca Pearson. I’m the new team lead for the pet products line, and we’re basically ready to go. We were just waiting for, uh, the right time to launch it.”

I knew she meant that they had been waiting for the CamLicity campaign to come to an end.