At first, I’m bombarded by what Jaymee discovered last night. As the vice president of NovaCore, he was the face of the organization while the inventor Andrew Yates focused on the coding. There are photos of Leo giving keynote speeches at major tech conferences, looking impossibly polished, all clean jawline and quiet authority. When NovaCore sold to Synexis Enterprises, the deal made headlines in every major business publication.
A profile piece describes him as “the man who turned a college kid’s startup into a Silicon Valley unicorn.” His TED Talk on ethical leadership has been viewed over sixteen million times.
Now Leo runs his own consultancy business and his client list reads like a who’s who of Fortune 500 companies.
But I continue to dive deeper, past the glossy headlines and polished press photos into the older articles, the ones that no longer make the first page of Google.
Then I discover what I’m looking for.
Buried deep in a five-year-oldTechCruncharticle on Leo Brennan is the smoking gun I expected to find.
Leo began his career at QuantumTech before joining NovaCore.
QuantumTech is where my brother Vaughn used to work. And from the dates given in the article, Leo and Vaughn would have overlapped.
I bear more than a passing resemblance to Vaughn. After I hit my growth spurt as a teenager and made up for the age difference between us, people sometimes mistook us for twins. It had delighted me, but irritated Vaughn.
Leo had said that spilling syrup on me was an accident. Sure. And I accidentally ate an entire sleeve of Digestives last Tuesday. Some “accidents” are more accidental than others.
I’m willing to bet my last clean pair of socks that Leo Brennan thought I was Vaughn, which inspired him to executea premeditated breakfast condiment attack on my unsuspecting head.
Which begs the question, why did he want to get revenge on my brother? What did Vaughn do to him?
An unsettled feeling begins inside me when I think of my brother. I used to hero-worship Vaughn, and for so long, he was the best big brother a guy could have. He’d let me sit in his room for hours while he did homework, never once telling me I was annoying. He taught me to shuffle cards when I was five because I couldn’t stop fidgeting. I still remember when he cornered Davey Stevenson after he made fun of my stutter. I watched from the doorway, five years old, barely understanding what was happening, just knowing that my big brother was angry on my behalf, and that meant I was safe.
Then things started to change.
Now, we haven’t spoken in over a year.
But I still have a familiar surge of family loyalty. You can be upset with family. You can not have them in your life. But some part of you will always flinch when someone else takes aim at them. Vaughn was my protector when no one else would stand up for me.
Leo Brennan messed with the Mansleys.
Maybe I should mess with him just a little?
After all, guilt is a powerful motivator. I know that only too well.
Guilt activates the anterior cingulate cortex, which is the brain’s conflict-detection center, creating a persistent discomfort that demands resolution.
From an evolutionary standpoint, the concept of guilt developed to maintain social bonds. When you wrong someone in your tribe, guilt compels you to repair the relationship before you get kicked out and eaten by wolves.
Studies show that people experiencing guilt will go to remarkable lengths to restore equilibrium, often overcompensating far beyond what the original transgression requires.
Leo has already found me this apartment.
What else could that guilt motivate him to do?
It could potentially be entertaining to find out.
After all, I’m going to be virtually immobile for the next six weeks, at least. My chances for fun are going to be severely limited.
By the time Leo arrives at my place, I’ve already had a gourmet breakfast from the generously stocked kitchen.
Leo is even more good-looking this morning than he was last night, which frankly seems like an unfair allocation of genetic resources.
His suit is charcoal, three-piece, and fitted with precision. Everything about him is deliberate—the perfectly knotted tie, the grooming, the way even his watch sits at exactly the right angle on his wrist.
His dark hair is neatly styled, but there’s one stubborn piece that falls across his forehead. I find it unreasonably satisfying that something about him refuses to cooperate.
