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The bullpen of Vanguard Creative Group was sixty feet wide, an open-concept monument of polished concrete floors, exposed steel ductwork, five-thousand-dollar Herman Miller ergonomic task chairs, and twenty-four young designers and copywriters who worked seventy hours a week for forty-two thousand dollars a year while Nick Sterling bought sports cars in Aspen.
When I stepped onto the concrete floorboards, the room died.Desks
The clatter of mechanical keyboards ceased.
The hum of the high-speed laser printers by the production room seemed to choke on its own toner.
Twenty people froze in their cubicles, staring at me with an expression of paralyzed, guilty horror:
My assistant, Marcus—a twenty-four-year-old kid from Colorado Springs whose student loans I had helped restructure four months ago—stood up from his desk, his face gray as wet cardboard:
“Sebastian…” Marcus breathed, taking two dragging steps toward me:
“Nick told us… he said you sabotaged the Apex pitch because you were taking a corporate kickback from a competitor in Chicago… He made us sign non-disclosure agreements thirty minutes ago!”
