JULIAN

The drive home felt longer than usual. Marcus navigated through evening traffic with practiced ease, but my mind was elsewhere.

Adrian Vaughn was back, that fact kept repeating, a drumbeat under every thought. I hadn't seen him in five years.

Since he'd finally admitted defeat and moved his operations to London, we'd competed for nearly a decade before that.

Business school rivals who'd carried that rivalry into the real world, every deal he'd pursued, I'd found a way to beat him, every investment he'd made, I'd made a better one.

Eventually, he'd stopped trying and moved away, built his empire elsewhere, and now he was back.

The question was...