The Revenge Mishap (The Revenge Club #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Leo

I’m fairly sure I’ve died and gone to hell. And apparently, hell looks like what would happen if Captain Jack Sparrow and Blackbeard decided to open an IHOP together.

“Isn’t this place awesome?” my client Ezra gushes as we pick up the menus.

Awesome. That’s one word for it.

I have other words I’m inclined to use instead, but I bite those back.

This is what happens when your client is a twenty-six-year-old who made millions from a meditation app for dogs and insists all his business meetings take place at innovative dining establishments.

You end up eating dessert at a restaurant called Pirates of Pancake Bay, where a mechanical parrot screams “Walk the pancake!” and a fog machine erupts periodically, smelling suspiciously of burned bacon.

Thankfully, we’re not sitting in the raised section of the restaurant, which is built to resemble the bow of a ship. The whole thing shakes every half hour, forcing patrons to desperately grab at their food to keep it from sliding off the table.

I kid you not.

This restaurant chain might work better in America, where servers would commit to the bit for the prospect of a decent tip.

Here in London, our server Trevor holds his plastic cutlass at arm’s length like he’s holding a dead fish and asks if we’d like to “Plunder the dessert menu” with the dead-eyed conviction of a man reading a hostage statement.

Ezra gleefully orders Shiver Me Timbers Tiramisu off the menu, while I grimly point at something named Scurvy Prevention Lemon Tart while calculating exactly how much I’m charging Ezra for this humiliation.

Luckily, it’s a lot.

“Isn’t this so much fun?” Ezra tries again to get me to show enthusiasm as Trevor retreats with the soulless shuffle of a man whose spirit left his body sometime around the lunch rush.

“It’s certainly something,” I reply. “Now, about your quarterly projections—”

“You need to lighten up, Leo!” Ezra says, grabbing a pirate hat out of the prop box next to our table and trying to place it on my head.

I catch his wrist midair.

“My rates triple if I’m forced to wear physical props,” I say flatly.

The hat slowly lowers.

I drop his hand and take a deep breath, then start to talk about liquidating some of his meme stock portfolio before it crashes.

“The fundamentals don’t support—” I start, but I can tell I’ve already lost him to whatever shiny thought just crossed his mind.

“Oh! Oh! I’m thinking of my next app idea!” Ezra interrupts. “Tinder, but for matching people with their ideal houseplants. We’ll analyze their aura! We could…”

Ezra goes into in-depth detail about how he could use machine learning to match succulents with people’s chakras based on their Spotify playlists.

I know from experience that I’ve just got to ride out this enthusiasm. I let my eyes roam the room, trying to gauge whether other patrons are enjoying or suffering through their dining experience.

It appears most people are having actual, unironic fun. A couple at the next table is sword-fighting with breadsticks, and something about the easy, uncomplicated joy on their faces makes me look away.

But as my gaze moves on from them, it snags on a table on the deck of the ship. Recognition jolts through me.

Surely not.

It can’t be.

My stomach hollows.

Fucking hell, it is him.

Vaughn Mansley.

Also known as my number one nemesis.

My knuckles go white against the ridiculous skull-and-crossbones tablecloth.

What the hell is Vaughn doing in a pirate-themed pancake restaurant in London? Why isn’t he back in San Francisco, continuing to steal his colleague’s ideas and passing them off as his own?

Although, to be fair, maybe even backstabbing, idea-thieving, code-plagiarizing sociopathic assholes need a pancake break now and then.

Yes, I might still have some unresolved issues with the guy.

I worked with Vaughn Mansley at my first real job out of college.

I was twenty-two, drowning in student debt, and trying to prove that a kid from the wrong side of Detroit deserved a seat at a table full of MBAs and trust funds.

All I had going for me was one genuinely good idea that I thought could revolutionize blockchain security protocol.

Vaughn offered to help me develop my idea.

But instead, he presented it as his own and rode it to a promotion.

When I confronted him, it quickly became apparent that he had the family money, the connections, and the boardroom polish to make his version of events stick.

I had the option of an IP lawsuit I couldn’t afford or a life lesson about not trusting too easily.

I chose the life lesson.

I’ve been thinking about Vaughn lately, thanks to my friend Andrew’s attempt at revenge against his own personal nemesis. Andrew’s plan backfired spectacularly, but it planted the thought in my head. What would I do if I ever ran into Vaughn Mansley again?

Now it appears the universe has placed Vaughn Mansley in my path to answer that question.

Is it definitely him?

I haven’t seen Vaughn for eight years, and from this angle, I can only see the side of his face. But the guy has the same tousled dark-blond hair, the same straight nose, and the same defined jawline as Vaughn.

A guy comes back from the restroom and claps Potential Vaughn on the shoulder.

“Mansley!” The guy’s booming voice carries over the restaurant.

Right, so it’s definitely him. That settles that part.

Now the question remains: what am I going to do about it?

Based on what Andrew has just gone through, I’m aware that a big revenge plot can backfire spectacularly.

Maybe instead, all I need to put the whole incident behind me is to confront Vaughn? Call him out for what he did to me and let him know that while it might appear he got away with it, I will always know the truth: his career success has been built on something he stole.

Isn’t that one of the reasons my resentment has festered?

When I first confronted him about stealing my idea, assuming it was some kind of misunderstanding, he deftly manipulated the conversation so it sounded like I was being unreasonable.

He’d crafted a narrative about a junior employee who didn’t understand how collaboration worked, and then made sure his version of events quickly spread through the company.

I never got to tell him exactly what I think about him and what he did.

Maybe this is my chance to rewrite the script?

With that thought in mind, I excuse myself from Ezra—who is now scrolling through a subreddit dedicated to rating the auras of different houseplants—and head in Vaughn’s direction.

On my way to the bow of the ship, I pass one of the pancake furnishing stations and a bottle of syrup catches my eye. I stop to look at it.

Hmm…

Vaughn used to be very fastidious about his appearance. Plus, he always hated being laughed at. These two facts combine to give me a glimmering of an idea.

The syrup bottle is shaped like a skull because, of course, it is. It grins at me like it knows what I’m about to do.

My fingers close around it, the surface cool and slightly sticky.

My heart hammers as I climb the steps to the top section, but I keep walking. Three more steps. Two.

Am I actually going to do this? My hands say yes.

They’re already gripping the bottle tightly, the same way I gripped a glass of water in that conference room at QuantumTech after I found out what Vaughn had done.

I’ve had eight years of career success since then, and apparently, all it takes is one sighting to put me right back in that room, twenty-two years old and feeling powerless.

Surely what Vaughn did to me then justifies a bit of syrupy revenge?

I’m right behind Vaughn now. His two companions are singing what sounds like “Happy Birthday,” but to the tune of a sea shanty.

Perfect. Vaughn getting publicly humiliated on his birthday is even better.

All I need to do is “trip” and spill some syrup on him.

I open the cap of the syrup bottle.

“Walk the pancake!” a mechanical parrot to my left shrieks just as I pretend to stumble.

Shit. My stumble turns from fake to real, and my hand jerks, meaning I squeeze the bottle harder than I meant to. The syrup doesn’t pour—it fucking projects. I wanted a drizzle, but what I get is closer to an arterial spray.

It hits the back of Vaughn’s head, and when he whips his head around, it plasters him directly in the face.

“What the—” He shoots up from his seat, hands clawing at his eyes, syrup dripping from his hair in amber ribbons.

One of his friends starts laughing. “Mate, you’ve been—”

Vaughn stumbles back, his shoulder slamming into the parrot’s perch. The parrot crashes onto their table. Plates and shot glasses explode, and both of his friends dive sideways.

I feel a savage satisfaction watching Vaughn stagger away from the destruction, syrup still streaming into his eyes. That’s what you get for—

His foot catches on the decorative netting draped along his booth.

“Wait, let me—” I lunge forward to grab his arm. Not to help him. Just to… Okay, maybe to help him a little. I wanted embarrassment, not actual injury.

That’s when the floor tilts.

Of course. The half-hour ship-rocking feature for the ship’s deck. Shit.

I didn’t factor a simulated maritime event into my revenge plan. It appears to be an oversight, in retrospect.

The floor angles sharply to the left, and Vaughn, already off balance and tangled in netting, goes down, but his foot stays caught.

The crack is audible.

“Fuck!” He hits the floor, his ankle bent at an angle that I’m pretty sure violates several laws of anatomy.

The floor tilts the other direction. He slides with it, but the netting holds his foot in place, twisting everything more.

“Don’t move!” I drop to my knees next to him, syrup bottle still somehow in my hand like evidence at a crime scene. “Your ankle—”

The floor starts to slide the other way again.

“Could someone turn off the boat?” Vaughn gasps. “This is like being seasick and broken at the same time. Zero stars, would not recommend.”

Every muscle in my body locks.

Fuck.

That’s not Vaughn’s voice.

As Trevor and his fellow servers move to shut off the boat, I stare down at the guy, writhing around on the floor in pain, covered in syrup.

He’s got tousled dark-blond hair, hazel eyes, and an aristocratic nose that are familiar to me. But his face is softer somehow, the same features rearranged with a gentler hand.

He’s not Vaughn.

Oh holy shit.