Then The Brutal Truth begins, where Elena meets and falls for Maddie Grey, a pesky Australian reporter at the New York newspaper she’s just bought.
Toward the end of The Brutal Truth, an upset Felicity throws a cup against her boss’s office wall. That kicks off the opening of The Awkward Truth, which follows Felicity’s adventures, including a week spent at a homeless animal charity she’s investigating for Elena.
Both Truth novels finish on the same day. As a result, The Awkward Truth is more of a “sidequel” than a sequel, as it sits beside The Brutal Truth rather than following it.
A year after the epilogue in The Brutal Truth, Maddie is in New York again to launch a book of blogs about her lonely time living in a city that was everyone else’s dream. The short story about book launch day shares the title with her blog: “Aliens of New York”.
Twelve days later, Elena is toasting the success of her fashion magazine having great circulation figures in the short story “The Brutal Lie”. She and Maddie celebrate only for Elena’s rival editor to attack them in print.
From the opening moment of The Brutal Truth to the last page of “The Brutal Lie”, two years and four months have passed.
I love these stories so much. Maddie’s tormented period in New York was semi-autobiographical of when I did a night shift job in Melbourne, far from home as a junior newspaper reporter. I didn’t, however, have the hot boss to take my mind off my misery!
Felicity is dear to me too. On the surface, she’s abrasive and rude—awkward—but underneath, she’s trying so hard to be the best she can, to impress the boss she idolizes, and generally figure out her life. I admire the fact she’s never afraid of readjusting her views if she realizes she might be in error. It’s rare and brave, just like Felicity. I’m glad her equally impressive girlfriend, veterinarian Sandy Cooper, gets to see exactly who she is under all those prickles.
But my eternal love goes to my queen of ice queens, Elena Bartell—lonely and fierce, smart and shrewd, and entirely too beautiful. I can well understand why she won Maddie’s heart.
I’m so grateful for the enormous warmth from readers when these stories first came out. And now I’m absolutely delighted they’ve all been gathered together in this Ultimate Boss Set collection.
So, finally, to quote Elena Bartell: “We’re done.”
— Lee Winter
THE BRUTAL TRUTH
CHAPTER 1
The Apocalypse
The apocalypse arrived when Maddie Grey had shampoo in her eyes, was half awake, and attempting to block out the whine of prehistoric plumbing from her ears.
“Mads! It’s the Armageddon!” Her flatmate, Simon Itani, thumped on the bathroom door, scaring the life out of her.
“What the hell?” Maddie shouted back. Her childhood friend had his good points, but he couldn’t exactly be considered trustworthy when it came to reporting end times.
“Your boss is texting you. Looks official. So I’m making the leap.”
Her boss never texted her. Maybe Simon was on to something. Maddie shut off the shower, quickly dried off, and pulled on battered shorts and a T-shirt. As she towel-dried her hair, she stared blearily in the mirror at the rings under her eyes. No sleep again. Not surprising. She was having more nightmares about getting lost and trying to find her way home. Her subconscious wasn’t exactly subtle. It was usually that nightmare or awkward sex dreams about the ex-girlfriend she hadn’t seen in three years. She’d always wake up anxious, aroused, and annoyed. Craving Rachel only because her ex was back home in Sydney was kind of pathetic.
The door thumped again, louder this time. “Are you decent?”
Maddie glanced at herself one last time and pulled a face. “Hard to say.”
The door flung open, resulting in way too much daylight.
Ugh. “You better be on fire.” Maddie glared at Simon. No singed hair.
“Even more exciting.” He ran his fingers through the trimmed two-day growth on his jaw.
“Wait, more exciting than a fire?” She reached for her tracksuit pants, rammed one leg in, and pulled them over her shorts. Sounded like a crisis worthy of properly getting dressed.
“Yep!” Simon tossed Maddie her phone. “It’s big. Which you’d know if you hadn’t slept the morning away. It’s eleven, and it sounds like your boss can’t wait.”
Maddie snatched up her phone. “Give me a break,” she grumbled. “I work night shift. I do need to sleep sometime.” She read the text message, her stomach twisting with anxiety. “They’re calling everyone in for a noon meeting. I guess the rumours were true. That company that bought us out last year? The owner’s finally noticed us and is probably coming in to gut us today.”
Simon nodded, a sage expression on his face.
She narrowed her eyes. “You sneak. You read his message?”
Simon lifted his hands in innocence. “Only cos your boss’s name flashed up. I wanted to see if it was important enough to rouse you from The Showering Dead.” He scratched his slightly rounded stomach. “So, she’s really on her way? The Elena Bartell? She who monsters itty-bitty papers to feed to her empire? And looks shit hot while doing it?”
“Looks like.” Maddie gave the message a final, morose glare. “Trust you to care more about her looks than her tactics.”
“Au contraire, Mads, I can care about both. That woman’s a bloody media genius. They did a case study on her at business school. Let me tell you how she racked up her first hundred mill—”
“Can’t wait for that story. Meanwhile, I’m not sure if I’ll even have a job by tonight. And with you moving back to Sydney soon, this is a total disaster. How am I going to afford rent on this shoe box on my own with no job?”
“Could be worse. You could actually like that shitty job you’re about to lose. I’ve seen you steel yourself to go into work. But now…” He gave her a grin.
Maddie huffed out a breath. “First, you could try to sound sorry for me. Second, I’m not going back to waitressing.”
“Hours would be better. And you might actually talk to people again. That has to be a bonus.”
“Okay, working for Hudson Metro News might not be perfect, but it’s a reporting job—finally. It’s what I’m good at. When I waitress, people get hurt.” Maddie’s mind drifted back to several regrettable incidents. At least the chef’s hair had grown back. Well, except his eyebrows.
“Come on, Mads, didn’t you come to New York to live the dream? Not tolerate the dream?”
A muscle in her jaw twitched. She hated it when people talked about the Dream. New York had never been her dream, although admitting that was social suicide. The truth was that every day she woke with a sinking feeling. The brightness, the buzz, and the constant rush left her feeling like a dead pixel on a Times Square billboard. Her friends back home wanted to live vicariously through her, so what could she say? It’s great. So great. Yeah. Just. Wow. Each day she cringed a little more at not living up to everyone else’s dream. Why didn’t she fit into a city that everyone fit into?
Simon was still talking. “You’ve been stuck doing the crapola shift, spending all your days sleeping and barely seeing the sights. So my point is, hoo-fucking-ray! You’ll be fired from a job you hate. We’ll celebrate tonight with the Fun Factory. Okay?” He paused and raked his gaze over her clothes. “And don’t change a thing. That outfit totally says ‘fire my ass’.”
Maddie glanced down at herself. He had a point. She must be more tired than she thought. That drug bust she’d been working on overnight had taken it out of her. “I’m not even working today.” She yawned. “I don’t have to get glammed up if it’s my day off. It’s the Aussie way.”
“Famous last words. Seriously, you want my advice?”
“Hell no. You can’t dress to save yourself, and my day’s disastrous enough as it is. So rack off and let me get my ass into gear.”
His laughter drifted through the door, as she toed it shut behind him. But Simon raised a good point: What did one wear to their apocalypse?
* * *
Maddie hauled herself into work with dark glasses affixed to stave off the beginnings of a tiredness headache and an all-black ensemble more befitting a gothic rock group than professional attire.
On the L train commute, she studied the Elena Bartell bio page she’d downloaded before she’d hit the subway. The chief operating officer and publisher for dozens of newspaper and magazine mastheads had sculpted, short, jet-black hair, pale features, and form-fitting designer clothes. There was a sleekness to her, like a lean, sci-fi action hero, and a dangerous look to her cool eyes.
She was listed as forty, although she could pass as years younger. The woman was notoriously media shy—ironic, given her profession and how much the camera loved her. Bartell had risen as a fashion writer on CQ magazine and, at one point, was being tipped as its future editor. Instead, Bartell had disappeared.
A year later, she’d turned up as the new owner of a small group of failing regional papers. Within a year, she’d turned them into profit; within two, she’d made her first million. She’d scored her first $500 million by age thirty-five.
