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“Thomas McGregor? He’s not with either of us. He’s not with W when they tried to jack up the mic, it started to feed back.

I’d already missed half the interview by the time I squeezed into the back.

Almost immediately I spotted Finn and his sidekick Hayes Hartman sitting in the middle of the audience.

It would have been hard to miss them—Finn, anyway—because the people around them kept leaning over to tell him they loved his books.

So that didn’t help my ability to focus, but the main distraction was my conversation with Lila.

I was surprised by how much it had rattled me.

A thug?

Me?

That was a first. What in the hell was she talking about?

What thuggish thing had I ever done to her? To anyone?

Also, I was confused as to why Finn had changed his mind about going with Lila after our poolside chat. That was moot now, of course, following our conversation on the beach.

Anyway, Finn was the least of my concerns at the moment.

During the meeting with Vaughn and Lila, Vaughn had discussed the eventual possibility of creating a new position, that of editorial director.

But he’d made it sound like that was something to be decided after the merger, after we’d all had a chance to work together, to evaluate our various strengths.

The position itself made sense. And it made sense that Vaughn would tap Lila for the role. But I wasn’t happy. Given the increasing strain between myself and Lila—well, let’s be honest. I wouldn’t have been happy about it even if Lila and I had been getting along like old chums.

They hadn’t been wrong. I was used to running my own little kingdom. The idea of working under Lila’s brand of micromanagement was not appealing.

To say the least.

For the first time I seriously considered leaving Millhouse.

It was a truly depressing thought.

I’d declined to sign the DNC clause Vaughn insisted we all had to agree to in order to continue our employment under the new entity (which increasingly sounded like the same old W that I offered value to the world.

I needed to believe that.

But the world, too, was changing. And maybe the value I added was becoming irrelevant.

Rows of chairs ahead, I watched Hayes lean over to whisper something to Finn. Watched Finn’s profile crease in a smile.

Maybe I was becoming irrelevant.