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He chuckles. “If that’s not a pen name, I don’t know what is. But get on it, Amalia, right away. Remember what I told you. You need a win. I want to keep you on here. I really do. But you gotta help me out. Show your worth. Ya know?”
I knew I should have spit in his coffee.
I smile. “I’m here for you, Cam,” I say, holding back my nausea from being such a suck-up.
He shakes a finger at me. “The clock is ticking, just so you know…”
Yeah, I know.
I glance at Ralph, who throws me a sympathetic smile and turns back to his computer monitor.
That’s right. Mind your business.
This manuscript could be my salvation—if I can, one, find out who the hell wrote it, and two, convince that person to let Empire acquire it.
Goddammit, I’m so close.
The stakes are high. Freakishly high. I have to make this work. I’ve got no choice.
I have to save my job. I have to keep my apartment. I have to preserve my self-respect. My pride. Which is still suffering from my last firing, if I’m honest about it.
Mother told me that eventually your chances run out in this town. But when exactly does that happen? After one firing, she told me I’d be fine. But if there’s another, not so much. I can’t lose this damn job. I just can’t.
I flip through the pages before me, and the stories get hotter and hotter. One is of a woman getting it on with a janitor in the stacks of a library, and someone hooking up in an alleyway during the Venice Carnival. Another centers around a happily married couple having fun with vegetables.
Dayum.
Yeah. This might be my last chance. I’ve got to make it work. I won’t give the world the satisfaction of seeing me fall on my ass again.
Finally, when it’s time to head out at the end of the day, I place the treasured manuscript into my backpack with the intention of reading the rest of it tonight after kickboxing. With my vibe close by of course, raring to go with its new batteries.
And as I do, I notice something on the last page.
It’s an email address. The email address of Ryder Night.
5
LEVI
“Why doesthat woman Amalia Plum look at me like she wants me to die? Like drop dead, right there in the Empire Ink Press offices, so she can step over my body on her way to the break room to get a donut?” I ask.
“Seriously, Levi,” Henry agrees. “She’s got a bug up her ass about something. It’s a shame. She’s quite the looker.”
Not sure I’d agree she’s a looker as much as she has alook. She’s pretty, sure. Hot, even. She has this soft-core goth thing going on that I can’t deny catches my eye. If she weren’t such a grouch, I might say she’s a looker. But, seeing as I don’t know what she looks like without a scowl on her face, I am reserving judgement.
I did catch her snickering at my socks, though.
Her brand of chin-length black hair, combat boots, and tattoos have been my kryptonite since college days. There was a girl like her in my dorm, always in tons of smudged black eye makeup, who looked so damn exotic to my rule-following, predictable naive-ass self. She never spoke to me, of course,since I wasn’t part of her I-hate-the-world crowd, but I jerked myself to a vision of her on more than one occasion.
Amalia isn’t quite as hard-core. She still has a girlishness about her, in spite of the hard exterior and bad attitude. It’s like she’s trying to be scary but can’t quite pull it off.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she spat in our coffee today,” I add.
“Sounds like a challenge, man,” Wyatt pipes up, his legs draped over the arm of the only decent chair in my living room.
I may have a couple successful books, but that doesn’t mean the money’s pouring in. Yet. There potential is there, but I’m still living like a struggling writer.
Which I kind of like. It’s comforting. It’s what I know. I can’t deny I’m a little nervous about the money everyone tells me I’m going to make, and how that will change shit. So for now, I’m relishing my humble beginnings. Thus, my only decent chair.
