Damaged Grump (Bad Chicago Bosses)

The bubbles help bring me out of my stupor, tickling my nose as they pop on the surface.

Osprey, huh?

An osprey is a hunting hawk. A bird of prey.

Somehow, I get the uneasy feeling that this hawk isn’t moving on to happier hunting grounds, and now he knows I’m out there.

2

Ragtime Baby (Roland)

There’s something about the Chicago skyline.

Maybe it’s nostalgia. Maybe it’s sentimentality. Maybe it’s just the weariness in my bones after a long damned business trip, the constant rigor that’s a delicate dance and an act of war.

Whatever it is, I’ve never seen the city looking more gorgeous than it does on approach at sunrise. The gold morning light and the peach-pink layering of the sky reflects off the skyscrapers like enormous mirrors, turning the horizon into dancing fire.

It’s been a long fucking morning.

A long flight from New Orleans.

Most of my staff are sound asleep, worn out, enjoying the luxury of the jet’s plush seats like cats curled up on a sofa. I’m the only one awake, restless, and watching the city take shape, my tablet paused on its scroll of aggregated headlines.

My feed condenses every industry scandal, competitor headline, web traffic analysis, and potentially explosive detail into a single report.

Even so, there’s one story I can’t get out of my head.

Billie Hicks. Once an acclaimed singer in the international music scene, starting in her teens in the eighties and skyrocketing to stardom at the head of her band. She was loved as much for her fresh-faced beauty as for her soul-soaring voice.

She’s a living icon—and also easy bait for jackals out for fresh blood.

We live in an age of instant celebrity and rapid demolitions now.

We lift people up as high as we can, as quick as we can, only to tear them down just as fast.

Isn’t the tragedy that much sweeter the farther they fall?

And isn’t that trite and predicable as hell?

That’s not the story I want to tell.

I’m not one more snarling predator waiting to be fed.

The story has merit. Heart. Soul.

It touches raw, open wounds. Enough that even a stranger—especially a pretty, innocent stranger who sticks her nose where it doesn’t belong—was willing to battle me over it in the open.

My fingers coil into a fist, remembering the altercation in the lounge.

The girl was so riled, her face flushed as coppery red as her hair with indignation.

Everything poor Miss Hicks stands to lose with the destruction of her iconic voice played Miss Snoopy’s heartstrings like a fiddle. A vibrant harmonic that made her ache, that made her seethe at me for daring to make it public.

Fuck, I wonder...what devastating loss in her past gave her such kinship with the fallen star?

That’s the reaction I want in my readers.

That’s the emotion I want them addicted to, and coming back for more.

Raw. Real. True.

In the end, it will have vastly more impact than simply playing on appetites for schadenfreude.

It leaves my gut churning, just thinking about it and the visceral blows this world can bring.

No, I’m not the one who lost everything, but that doesn’t mean someone I love didn’t pay the price once upon a fucked up time.

I can’t get it out of my head as I watch the clouds drifting over the blade-like wings of the jet as we descend.

It’s been ten goddamned years, and I still see it like yesterday.

The demolished studio. My younger brother, furious and bristling in the center of the room, the ruins of his guitar between his savaged, bleeding fingers, his chest heaving.

A monster’s name on his lips.

Even as that monster mumbled a half-assed apology with an ingratiating smile in that broad, smarmy face playing at being charming.

These things happen, Barrett. Some deals don’t always work out. It’s never easy; it’s just the way of the industry. It’s just—

I hadn’t let him finish his thought.

By the time that man limped away, my brother wasn’t the only one bleeding. Siren-red stained the cropped tufts of Vance Haydn’s silvering hair.

My vision focuses as I catch myself reflexively clenching and unclenching my hand, reliving the impact of my fist into Haydn’s nose. My knuckles go so tight they threaten to burst through skin.

I lost my brother that day.

He’d told me he’d be all right, that he’d get past it.

He was never okay again.

He didn’t get over it.

And now, he never will.

I close my eyes, blocking out the glinting silver light arcing across Chicago like sharp tinsel blotting out bad memories.

I don’t need to relive this shit for the billionth time.

I can’t let every sympathetic story about some woebegone pop starlet drag me down into the mire again.

Not when I have more important things to focus on.

Opening my eyes, I take a deep, centering breath and turn away from the window, focusing on the prim, grey-haired figure of my assistant in the seat next to me.

If I never sleep, neither does Wanda.