Page 37 of The Session

Mark looked over at the approaching gunman, grabbed the fire extinguisher, and sprayed him in the face.

“Holy shit,” Blaise replied. “That’s straight out of Die Hard.”

“Keep watching.”

Mark picked up Bettencourt and started running toward the ambulance. Halfway there, the crack of a shot rang out and his left shoulder jerked.

“That’s when he took a bullet,” Tru said.

Mark raced over to the rear of the ambulance and went back to work on Bettencourt. From the body-cam point of view, blood trickled through Mark’s white uniform.

When Mark said “Shoot the other guy or call another ambulance,” Henley let out a laugh.

“Kind of a different story, don’t you think?” Tru asked.

“That’s some movie-level shit,” Blaise said.

Tru rewound the video to where Mark ran toward the camera holding Bettencourt’s body, the cloud from the fire extinguisher still visible in the distance and the gunman leaning backward, wiping at his face. She zoomed in on Mark holding Bettencourt.

“It’s like a movie poster,” Henley said.

Tru walked over to the screen and pointed at Mark. “We need a rebrand. This is it.”

“Who is that?” a female assistant in the back asked.

“That’s Mark. Mark Lightman. Max’s other son,” Tru replied.

“I don’t know, Tru. It’s a bold play,” Morris cautioned.

Tru gestured toward the assistants, the younger generation, the most loyal of all.

“Look at them. Tell me what you see,” Tru said.

Their eyes were wide. The girl who had volunteered answers before clutched the arm of another young woman next to her. Their excitement projected across the room.

Henley turned to Morris. “You’ve got a guy that acts like Captain America and somehow has Max Lightman’s face, and you’ve just been sitting on it while I’ve been trying to figure out how to get some CEO legally high—as a way to save this operation?”

“Well, we didn’t exactly have all the facts at the time,” Morris replied.

“Well, I’d hop on your little corporate jet and sign this guy up, because I’m going to get way more mileage out of meet and greets with him than helping politicians erase their children’s OnlyFans accounts.”

“I want to use the full resources of Social Strategy to get this clip everywhere. I want every blogger, every journalist, everybody we know, showing this video,” Tru told everyone.

“What’s the legal status of the footage?” Morris asked.

“It’s not a problem. There might be some legal things we need to do for the kid, but nothing I can’t handle,” Henley replied for her.

“We have to run this by Marnie and Max before they start hearing their name out there,” Morris said.

“We don’t,” Tru said.

“What do you mean?”

“We make Mark Greenley famous right now and exonerate him. I reach out to him, get him inside. Then we reveal the connection. By that time, Max is going to be okay with it. Marnie is a different matter,” Tru admitted.

“You can’t buy heroism like this,” Henley added.

“True, and getting him on board might be a problem. The guy you see,” Tru said, pointing to Mark on the screen, “is who he is, and by now he might have learned a bit more about our, well, complicated organization. It might not be an easy sell.”