Page 238 of Darling Venom
He waved me off.
“I had too much pride to steal it. Swear. But my agent called, told me my publisher didn’t want the manuscript she tried to shop to them, and suggested I write something more marketable.” He spat the last word as if it were profanity.
“She wasn’t wrong.”
I felt defensive over someone I didn’t know, but Abigail and Reagan often dished the same advice to their authors. Without a big name or connections, publishers didn’t take risks unless the manuscript deserved it.
Unless it was The Imperfections.
“She was wrong,” he insisted. Tap. Tap. “Never tried hard enough to sell my shit, that one. Questionable, at best. Bat shit, most certainly. The worst thing is, she’s no longer my agent, but the witch still gets a cut of every sale of The Imperfections.”
“She sold the book to the publisher. She’s entitled to a cut of the proceeds.”
“Anyone with a functioning mouth could sell that book.” He paused. “Actually, you don’t even need to say a damn word to sell it. Just hand it to any paper pusher at a Big Five, and the rest’ll be history.” Tap. Tap. Tap. “Anyway, point is, she shouldn’t have told me to write something marketable.”
“Agree to disagree.”
He snorted.
Agreeing to disagree was the only thing we ever agreed on.
But it worked. We finished Darling Venom without a hitch. (I didn’t count chapter eighteen on account of the fact that I backed his decision to keep the passage.)
I just wish he’d give me an explanation, but my expectations of Terry hovered somewhere below the dude who engineered the Leaning Tower of Pisa and above Joe Exotic.
He did, however, grow on me.
Tap.
Tap.
His fountain pen broke.
Midnight ink spurted everywhere, dripping down the side of the island and splashing onto the hardwood. It would stain soon, and I might have worried over it if Tate hadn’t mentioned that his plan to renovate the brownstone had gone up in flames after Kellan died.
The more Terry trashed this place, the higher the chances Tate would finally do something for himself.
Guess I was in the mood to push everyone today.
Terry curled his upper lip, a telltale sign he was about to go on the defensive. “If she hadn’t told me to go marketable, to sell out, I wouldn’t have done what I did.”
Personal accountability seemed to be a lost cause when it came to the great Terrence Marchetti, so I didn’t press him.
Not true, I reminded myself. He came through on Darling Venom. He just needs a nudge. Someone to point out his flaws, give him some tough love, and push him in the right direction.
Since Terrence Marchetti had no friends, I guess that someone would be me.
I raised a brow. “So, you stole the manuscript because you needed one at that moment, and you didn’t want to write something marketable.”
He shrugged. “I’m no sell-out.”
“Just a thief.”
“The book wouldn’t have been published if I didn’t take it.” He held both palms up. “The author I took The Imperfections from never debuted and didn’t have plans to. It’s like Darling Venom. If I didn’t intervene, Kellan’s book would’ve died right alongside him, and that would have been an even bigger travesty. To lose a son is unbearable. To lose his words—unsurpassable.”
Stealing an unknown author’s work was not at all similar to polishing his son’s final manuscript to fulfill his dying wish.
Not even close.
