Page 1 of The Revenge Game

Chapter One

Andrew

You know how there are those moments you’ve over-fantasized about? I’m talking about the ones you’ve scripted to perfection like the writers ofSuccession,The Crown,andBreaking Badgot together to write an Oscar-winning screenplay.

Somehow, on this rainy Tuesday night in a small London pub called The Posh Pigeon, I’ve stumbled upon the chance to act out one of those fantasies in real life.

I’ve ducked into the pub on my way home from The Natural History Museum and have just ordered a pint from the bartender when my eyes catch on the guy standing on the other side of the bar.

Recognition strikes and my breath whooshes out of me like my lungs have become a giant whoopee cushion. My face immediately starts to tingle.

Justin Morris.

Here.

In London.

Not just in London, but in the same pub as me.

What are the statistical odds of that? It’s like having your horoscope come true while being struck by lightning as a seagull steals your winning lottery ticket. The universe has a sick senseof humor, dropping my high school tormentor into my quiet London evening.

At the sight of him, my carefully constructed adult life—where I’ve been a successful tech CEO who owns a company that employs thousands—crashes like an untested software release. Suddenly, I’m fourteen again, trying to make myself invisible in the hallway as Justin and his friends approach. The speed of my regression is almost comical, like I’ve skipped every stage of adult development and landed squarely back in puberty, complete with imaginary acne and the sudden inability to form full sentences.

I grip my beer glass so tightly my knuckles turn white as ten years of carefully crafted revenge scenarios flash through my mind like a PowerPoint presentation. I’ve spent a lot of time working out the exact details of what I’d say to Justin Morris if I ever saw him again.

In my imagining, he’s always spotted me first, his eyes widening in recognition before he approaches me.

“Hey, didn’t we go to high school together?”

Me, looking at him with disinterest: “Did we?”

Him, getting excited: “That’s right. I read an article about you. You’re the guy who built the NovaCore system. Andrew Yates, right?”

Me, looking down my nose at him: “Yes, that’s me. And I recognize you now. You’re the guy who tormented me in high school for being gay and geeky. Are you proud of yourself? Did it make you feel more of a man to torture someone so far below you on the social hierarchy?”

In my imagining, Justin draws a sharp breath as he realizes someone is actually going to hold him accountable for his past actions.

An earlier version of my fantasy has him stammering a broken, twisted apology as he tries to explain away his past behavior.

But in later versions, I mute him because I’ve heard enough of Justin Morris’s voice for a lifetime.

In the next part, I tell him in a clear, articulate voice exactly what I think of him before throwing a Bloody Mary into his overly handsome face, the splatters of which leave an incriminating stain on his pants, indicating all might not be well with his bladder control.

And yes, I might have researched what cocktail stains the most because I’m a details guy, even regarding fantasy revenge plots.

Then, as Justin stares at me, pants wet, chest heaving, looking utterly humiliated, I deliver an absolute zinger before I turn away from him: “You’re not even worth my spit.”

This is how it’s supposed to go down.

Unfortunately, the Justin before me now differs from the Justin I had imagined.

Until now, eighteen-year-old Justin was the most superior specimen of masculinity I’d ever seen. Light-brown hair that curled at the end when it got too long. Golden skin. Blue-green eyes.

But it turns out Teenage Justin was a primitive life form compared to the man across the bar from me.

Gone is his baby face, the roundness of his cheeks, and in its place is chisel. The kind of chisel that would make sculptors weep into their marble dust. His cheekbones look like they were designed with mathematical precision and his jawline could cut diamonds.

Time has taken everything that made eighteen-year-old Justin annoyingly attractive and cranked the dial up to maximum.