CHAPTER 1 Everleigh Bradley
Thirty-Two to One
Vegas?
Vegas?
I blow out a breath. “I’ve never had much of an interest in transferring out of this office, sir,” I say to my boss. I fold my arms over my chest.
I have thirty-two clients here in Chicago. Some I speak to weekly, others daily, and a few micromanagers get me on the line multiple times a day.
But in Vegas, I lay claim to exactly zero.
And now my boss is offering me one. One.
“Give it some thought before you bow out, Everleigh,” Mr. Langford tells me. He leans back on the edge of his desk.
“How do I go from thirty-two clients to one and believe it’s a promotion?” I counter.
“I told you it’s unconventional. This is a complete rebrand, and we’ll need you by this client’s side at all times.”
“Who is it?” I demand.
“It’s confidential.”
“Then it’s a no, Stuart. I’m not moving across the country to work with a client and giving up everything I have here when I don’t even know who it is.”
He sighs. “It’s confidential because it’s high-profile. What’s your end goal?”
We’ve been over this a thousand times. “To open my own branding firm working with my own high-profile clients instead of working for someone else.”
“I know, Everleigh. And this is the step that could open that door for you. Trust me on this.”
“Do you know who it is?” I ask.
He presses his lips together and shakes his head. “All I know is that it’s in Vegas. I could make a guess, but I won’t. Don’t you have a brother there?”
The fact is that yes, I do have family there. But I have family here in Chicago, too. And friends, including my best friend. My entire life is here.
“Don’t try to sell me with family,” I say. I want to hiss it at him, but I’m trying to maintain that professional level of respect you’re supposed to have for your boss—which I do have. I’ve always had it.
I just don’t know what to do. I love my job, and I worry that changing things could be a huge mistake. I’ll lose all of my clients, but if I open my own firm someday down the road, I can’t take them with me anyway.
“If you agree to this, I’ll remove your non-compete, so after the terms of the agreement are met, you’re free to start your own firm,” he offers as if he just read my mind. “If things go well, you can take this high-profile client with you.”
“Why would you do that?” I narrow my eyes at him as I try to get to the bottom of his motivation.
He shrugs. “They asked for my best strategist, and that’s you. We’ll get the credit for the first year, and from what I’ve heard, this client needs a lot of work. I know you’re going to leave Langford eventually, so I guess I’m just doing my part to set you up for success.”
“That’s really kind of you.”
He holds up a hand. “Before you go getting all mushy on me, let me be the first to admit that they’re offering five hundred grand to take on this client. They’re paying up front, and we plan to take forty percent of that. You’ll get the rest plus moving expenses.”
Money isn’t really an issue for me since I hail from Thomas Bradley, the man who started the very successful Bradley Group development and construction company, but it’s still quite an attractive offer.
I’m currently making a third of what he wants to give me, while it feels an awful lot like he’s cutting my workload.
It makes me wonder if there’s more to it, but we’ve worked together for the last decade. I believe him when he says that I’m the best brand strategist he has and that’s why he’s offering this position to me.
“Can I have the night to think about it?” I ask.
He nods. “Absolutely. But I’ll need your answer first thing in the morning. If it’s a no, I have to figure out my next plan.”
“Understood,” I say, and I tap my fingers on my bicep where they’re resting with my arms still crossed over my chest. I try one more time. “You can’t give me any hints at all about who this client is?”
He presses his lips together. “If I had specific details, I’d give them to you.”
“What if it’s an athlete?” I ask, and I wrinkle my nose. Four of my five brothers play in the NFL, and the other one is a pro baseball player. I’d really prefer not to work with athletes, as Stuart well knows after all our years together.
But he’s insisted the entire time that we’ve worked together that athletes not only make great clients, but I’d be a built-in expert because of my brothers.
“Then what if it is? Could still be a pretty interesting stepping stone, don’t you think?” Silence passes between us, and his phone starts to ring. “I better take this. It’s my wife. Let me know first thing tomorrow, okay?”
I nod, and the first person I call when I slide into my Audi is my brother.
Not the one in Vegas.
I’ve always been closest to Ford, and I think it’s because my two older brothers, Madden and Dex, were close on their own. I was just the annoying little sister who came along and picked up NERF guns only to accidentally shoot my older brothers in the balls.
Yeah…“accidentally.” It’s not my fault I always had good aim.
Aside from that, Madden is four years older than me and tends to go off and do his own thing.
Dex has always had a bit of a delinquent edge to him, though he seems to be straightening out.
I think I’ve always just been the rather prim and proper, somewhat wholesome younger sister who cared about her studies and her family above everything else.
And Ford is a lot like me. He’s more of a traditionalist. A pragmatist. He’s two and a half years younger than me, and I got to pretend he was my baby when I was a toddler and he came along.
I guess in a lot of ways, I’ve always been a bit of a caretaker when it comes to my siblings. My entire family, really.
And that’s why I’m not sure I want to leave Chicago.
My family is scattered all over the US, but this is our home base.
And when Stuart brought up the fact that I have a brother in Vegas, he meant Dex.
He’s been all over the news lately with his new wife and baby, and the truth is that when I got to hold my nephew at the funeral of one of the high school football coaches a few weeks ago, I had this tug on my heartstrings that one of my brothers has a baby that I won’t get to watch grow up.
But Stuart forgot that I have another brother in Vegas, too—Archer.
People always seem to forget Archer, but not me.
It’s that whole caretaker thing I have going on.
He’s the only baseball player in a family of football stars, the lone wolf, the one who I text once a week but rarely get a response from.
I text him the same thing every week.
Me: Thinking about you, little bro.
Sometimes he thanks me, sometimes he simply thumbs-ups my text, sometimes he ignores me…but sometimes, on very rare occasions, he actually writes back.
I wouldn’t mind being a little closer to him, either.
“Hey, Ev,” Ford answers. “What’s wrong?”
I laugh. “Nothing.”
“Then why are you calling? You never call.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. But I have something I need to talk out.
Is now a good time?” I pull out of my spot.
I could’ve called Penny, my best friend who I also work with.
But I’m not ready for her to know that I got this offer.
I’m not ready to tell her that maybe we won’t get to see each other every day anymore.
“I’m just finishing dinner,” he says. “Go for it.”
I sigh. “My boss offered me a job in Vegas. It’s one client and triple the money.”
“What’s the catch?” he asks.
“I have to move to Vegas.”
“Do it. Have you been there? Fuckin’ paradise,” he says.
“Yes, of course I’ve been there. But to move there? And for a single client when I have to drop all of my others?” I ask.
“Sounds like a goddamn vacation, to be honest. How many clients do you have?”
“Thirty-two.”
“And you’ll have one in Vegas for triple the money?” he asks.
“Yeah, but I have no clue who this client is. Just that he’s high profile and this is a nontraditional job. It could be me shadowing some stuck-up asshole day in and day out.”
“So…basically working with yourself?” he jabs, and I laugh.
“Shut up.”
“I’m kidding. It could be anyone. What if it’s one of the Hemsworth brothers and you have to spin a tale about his divorce so he can marry you?”
“You know better than to tempt me with the Hemsworths,” I say.
“Have you done a pro-con list yet?”
“Can I verbalize it?”
“Of course,” he says.
I tick them off, organizing them as I talk.
“Cons are having to give up my client list, not knowing who I’m working with, and moving across the country.
Pros are that I have family in the area, I’d cut from thirty-two to one, and my boss said he’d delete the non-compete from my contract so I could take this client with me and open my own firm when our contract terms expire. ”
“Dude. Take the fucking job. You can’t spell it out more than that.”
“What if it’s an athlete?” It’s the same question I posed to my boss.
“We’re not so bad, you know.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve just been around a lot of you my entire life, and my job provides an excellent escape,” I say.
“Listen, plenty of athletes need someone like you in their corner,” he points out. “And if you really and truly want to branch off on your own, this might be your chance. At least get out to Vegas and give it a real chance.”
He’s right. I know he is. There’s never a good time to jump ship when I have as many clients as I do, but this contract will have a start and end date stamped on it, and that end date will be the key to my entire future.
If that’s what I really and truly want.
It is. It’s always been what I want for as far back as I can remember. I first learned what a brand strategist was when my mother wanted to project a certain image to the media. I was in first grade when Paola came into our house, shooed my siblings and myself out of the room, and got down to work.
I loved Paola’s gorgeous, designer business suits and dresses, and I knew that someday I’d step in the same kinds of Louboutins she did.
And now I do, except I’m still working for someone else.
I guess this means I have my answer.