Chapter One

Cormac

Pierce and I had cigars hanging from our lips, as I clutched the steering wheel of my brand-new Porsche 718 Boxster. She was a beauty, and she purred seductively as I drove her, treating her like the beautiful lady that she was. The agate-gray body color wasn’t available on purchase, so I had it custom painted and got black leather interiors.

We were driving with her top down, and Pierce’s arm hung off the side as he sucked in a mouthful of smoke and blew it out.

“I don’t think I can feel my face anymore.” Pierce shouted the words over the sound of the roaring engine as I drove at top speed. We were pushing two seventy now, and the road stretched out empty and long ahead of us.

“That’s the stuff, old boy,” I shouted back, and we both laughed. We’d fallen into the habit of referring to each other as “old boy” during our time in Harvard together. It was a tradition of the Workmen’s Society, which we were members of, where our biggest responsibilities had included organizing top secret costume parties and life threatening dares.

Pierce’s proudest moment was when he’d organized a bungee jump off the Macau Tower in China for our last and final Workmen’s Society gathering, a few weeks before we all graduated.

Five out of the eighteen members had backed out at the last minute. The fall was excruciatingly high and unbelievably dangerous, but Pierce and I had both done it and lived to tell the tale.

After graduating from Harvard Business School, which was now nine months ago, our lives had changed. We were in the real world now, of jobs and business meetings and making deals.

My plan had always been to return to Brunswick, where my mom and I had moved after my brother, Rhett, started a shipping company with his friends and they turned into billionaires practically overnight.

Rhett paid for Harvard and all those insane trips I took with Pierce and the Workmen’s Society. He gave me all the money I ever needed—enough to pay for Pierce’s extravagant lifestyle too. We were best friends. Now I owed Rhett. And I obliged happily.

Rhett’s company, C Scape, which he ran with his friends Hunter and Owen, was quickly turning into one of the top shipping corporations in the country, and I wanted to be a part of the action when it became top in the world.

I looked up to Rhett and his friends, all self-made men, none of whom had business degrees from Harvard, the way Pierce and I did.

When I moved back to Brunswick and started working with my brother eight months ago, I suggested Pierce as a prospective employee. He was my best friend—I trusted him, and the two of us had been the smartest whips in our class of 2016. Rhett and his friends couldn’t deny that hiring Pierce would be a wise business decision.

So, here he was, in Brunswick with me, working for the same company. And in my Porsche, driving at two fifty with the top down, smoking our cigars, we were trying to recreate bits of the extravagant lifestyle we led when we were in Harvard and members of the Workmen’s Society.

“A wild ride was not what I was expecting in Brunswick, Georgia,” I heard Pierce say, and I pulled the cigar out from between my lips to speak.

“Our little city might surprise you yet, old boy,” I said, and Pierce laughed and ran his hands through his hair,shaking his head.

“Hey, man, I didn’t get a chance to thank you, but really, I’m grateful for the opportunity. I get to be part of a young, hugely successful corporation, when I figured my only hope was to crunch numbers and yell into the phone on Wall Street,” Pierce replied, and we both laughed at the thought. We’d often discussed at Harvard how we didn’t want that life for ourselves.

We didn’t want to turn into Harvard Business School’s thousands of alumni on Wall Street, leading the same high-flying but boring lives.

“When my brother said they were looking for someone else to join the team, it was a no-brainer,” I told him, and I stuck the cigar back between my lips and took a puff.

“Oh, and by the way, this new house is perfect. Way better than any penthouse on the sixtieth floor of a Manhattan high-rise,” Pierce added, and I nodded. I knew what he was talking about. I preferred the houses in Brunswick too, with their backyards and roomy spaces.

“Let’s just hope we don’t turn into old men too young,” I said, and he laughed.

“And yeah, my sister’s visiting—she lives in LA right now, but we haven’t seen each other in a year, and now that I have my own place, I figured that she could come visit for a few weeks,” Pierce continued, as I took a sharp turn on a hairpin bend.

Our bodies swerved to the side, the ashtray rattling in its holder between us, but it didn’t cause a break in our conversation.

“Oh, yeah? That’s good. I’ll finally get to meet someone else from the Wolfton family,” I said. Pierce shook his head.

“Yeah, she’s the sweetest thing there is. I just want to help her out a little,” Pierce continued, and I nodded.

“Didn’t you say she dropped out of college last year?” I asked. Pierce drew in a deep breath.

“She was an art major, and now she’s focusing on her music—man, I just hope things work out for her. LA is a hard city to break when all you have is a guitar and no connections,” Pierce continued, and I agreed with him.

But we forgot about his sister in the next few minutes, when I accelerated and pushed the car to two seventy-give and we couldn’t even smoke our cigars at that speed anymore.