Page 300 of Manhattan Bossholes

“You’ve been coming to this crappy, hole-in-the-wall pub to wallow about life since we graduated,” Vincent said. He pulled out a chair and sat down in the seat next to mine. “You think after all these years we wouldn’t know where to find you?”

“I’m not wallowing,” I grumbled. “You didn’t have to send out the cavalry.”

Aiden gave me a look that said, Yeah, sure buddy. He plopped down next to Vincent. “You know a thumbs-up is the universal sign for ‘I am not okay,’ right? It immediately set off alarm bells.”

“Especially when it’s all you sent, with no other response,” Paul said. He clapped me on the shoulder before sitting down on my other side. “We were worried about you, man.”

“And it seems like we had good reason to be,” Vincent said, moving my glass out of the way as he leaned against the table. “Drinking alone? You know that’s not the answer to anything.”

Aiden picked up my almost-empty glass and sipped at the alcohol that was left. He winced. “Especially when drinking the shittiest whiskey in Manhattan. Oh, it’s bad.”

“Settle in, boys,” Dominic said. “I’ll sort drinks.” He disappeared up to the bar, returning with everyone’s drink of choice, including a Coke for himself and a glass of water for me. I glared at him. He shrugged as he sat down. “Consider yourself cut off. Now start hydrating. You can thank me later.”

Aiden sent off a message on his phone. “Just let Cora know we found him. She’ll tell Piper and Chloe that we may be a while.”

I rolled my eyes, my head fuzzy. “This is all unnecessary.”

Aiden set his phone down. “How about you tell us what’s wrong and we’ll decide what’s necessary.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I insisted, annoyed. I knew their hearts were in the right place, but I wasn’t in the mood for brotherly love right now. “You’re all blowing this thumbs-up way out of proportion.”

“Mm-hmm,” Vincent said. “I doubt it. What was it this time? Nana Dee? Your parents?”

“Dee’s okay,” I said. As annoyed as I was at them, I wasn’t going to make them worry about that. “At least so far as nothing’s changed on that front.” If anything big had happened with Dee or her health, I would have called them all immediately. “It’s Natasha.”

“Is she okay?” Dominic asked.

“She’s…I don’t even know where the fuck to start.”

Dominic shrugged. “How about the beginning?”

I sighed, taking a sip of my water before explaining what happened at the board meeting and about the fight with Natasha afterward. I watched their expressions shift from horror at what my mother had tried to do to disbelief to pure shock when I told them I’d fired Natasha on the spot. Paul gaped so wide I could see the crowns at the back of his mouth.

“There’s no way,” Vincent said, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair. “Natasha isn’t the kind of person to sell someone out for money.”

“I agree,” Dominic said, shooting Aiden concerned looks across the table. “It’s not possible. Not the way Stacy’s always talking about her. If anything, she goes out of her way to help people. Natasha is a good person, Trent. You know that.”

“I thought so too,” I grumbled under my breath. “But apparently she had us all fooled.”

“Okay,” Aiden said, frowning like I’d just told him a load of bullshit. “Let’s just take a pause here. Your mother’s not exactly a reliable source. We all know that. Could she have been making the whole thing up? Lying about Natasha taking the money?”

“No,” I insisted. “Not possible. All the information she had was true about Dee and Jimmy and the issues we’d encountered with the new line. Outside of you guys, Natasha’s the only one who knew all those things. Sure, she’d tried to say it wasn’t like that, but she admitted that she’d been talking to my mom behind my back. Why hide it, unless she was selling me out?”

Aiden hummed uncertainly. “I don’t know. I still feel like something’s not adding up.”

I shook my head, my anger resurfacing. “She could have come to me at any time and told me that my mother reached out. But she didn’t do that. She organized secret meetings and shared my private business with the last person I wanted to know about it. She betrayed my trust. Period. End of story.”

“No, don’t leave it like that,” Paul said. “You need to talk to Natasha again.”

“Let her explain,” Vincent agreed.

“Don’t forget we all had issues in our relationships that seemed bleak at one point,” Aiden said. “Remember when I screwed things up with Cora and told her we shouldn’t see each other anymore?”

I did. Aiden had almost gotten into a fistfight with Cora’s ex—and a nosy influencer had witnessed and recorded the altercation. The PR nightmare would have been disastrous, but the group of us had stepped in to help him out. This was different though. Cora had never betrayed Aiden.

“Look,” Aiden continued. “When you’re in the middle of this kind of situation, it feels like you can’t possibly get past it together. That things can’t possibly work. But we’re the proof sitting right here, Trent, that things can work out, if you’re willing to put in the effort. I promise you, you can figure this out with Natasha.”

I took another swig of my water. “I really don’t think I want to. Making a go of things with Natasha in the first place was a big mistake. This was only supposed to be for Nana Dee’s sake. It was never supposed to be real.”