Read The First Pages Of Emma Rosenblum’s Highly Anticipated Novel, Very Bad Company

Last spring, Emma Rosenblum welcomed readers into the sexy, slightly sinister world of Bad Summer People — where best friends sleep with each other’s wives, gossip is the main form of currency, and the discovery of a dead neighbor isn’t even the season’s most salacious event. And this May, Rosenblum is back with Very Bad Company, which promises to up the ante on the intrigue and misdeeds.

Every year, Very Bad Company’s fictional tech startup, Aurora, gathers its top employees for a retreat in Miami. It’s a week of pure bliss, including facials at the 1 Hotel spa, jet-skiing in Lake Pancoast, and dinner at Carbone — until one of the high-level executives vanishes after the first night. “I’ve worked in media for nearly two decades. That’s a lot of jobs at a lot of companies working with a lot of different people! Very Bad Company is set in the world of tech startups, not media, but there’s a universality to any corporate setting,” Rosenblum says of the inspiration behind the novel. “Friendships with coworkers, competition for raises and promotions, office gossip, trying to impress the boss — these are themes I’m personally, at times painfully, familiar with, and I used all of that experience in the novel.”

Plus, Rosenblum couldn’t resist jumping back into the psyches of some very “bad” people. “Being nice and normal is boring. Who wants to read a book about that?” she asks. “The characters in Very Bad Company are less bad bad than in my first book, but they’re caught up in a situation that pushes them to perhaps act in ways they’re not proud of. But that’s the fun of it.”

Very Bad Company is out on May 14 and available for pre-order now. Below, read the book’s first pages, exclusive to Bustle.

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Prologue

Never Give In

John Shiller hadn’t meant for anyone to die. He’d grown up in Palo Alto, not exactly a hotbed of homicide. His dad, Erik, had been early to the tech scene, working on the periphery of legends like Bill and Paul and Steve and Steve, never quite making it into anyone’s inner circle. Erik was an operations man, helped the boy geniuses streamline their businesses, and did well for himself in the process — John lived in a nice house, went to a fancy private school, Menlo, and received a Jeep Grand Cherokee for his sixteenth birthday.

But his dad was haunted by the outsize success of others, the billions he’d never made. John would find him sitting on the grass in their groomed backyard, holding a beer but not drinking it, lost in a not-rich-enough haze. “I should have started something myself ” is something John heard him say a million times during John’s childhood. “Not sure why I didn’t.” Early in his life, John vowed to be different from his father. He’d be one of the chosen ones. One of the Steves and Bills. Sure, he wasn’t a brilliant engineer. But he understood the markets and he understood people and he understood that every company, no matter the type, was about successfully selling itself to an audience, be it customers, or investors, or a board of directors. That he could do.

And now it was all coming down on top of him, piece by piece. He’d gone into this week on such a high, looking forward to being lauded in The Wall Street Journal, having pulled off one of the most profitable maneuvers in history. Instead, he was in an Uber, sitting next to his assistant, Madison Bez, on their way to identify a body at the Miami Dade county medical examiner. The drawbridge to the Venetian Causeway East Bridge was up — some blowhard in a mega yacht needing to get through at 1:00 a.m. — giving John more time to think about how he’d gotten into this mess.

Early in his life, John vowed to be different from his father. He’d be one of the chosen ones.

Everything he’d worked so hard for, everything he’d achieved, had nearly been ripped away from him, and by one of his own. He’d nurtured his team, he’d loved them, he’d given them so much. Money! Equity! The opportunity to work alongside John Shiller. Only to be betrayed by them, each and every one.

As his hero Winston Churchill once said, “Never give in — never, never, never, never.” John wouldn’t give in. John would not become his dad, filled with regret that he wasn’t a titan. He would fight and win, by any means necessary. The bridge finally closed, and his car started moving. Biscayne Bay sparkled in the moonlight as John headed toward the morgue.

EXCERPTED FROM VERY BAD COMPANY. COPYRIGHT © 2024 BY EMMA ROSENBLUM. EXCERPTED BY PERMISSION OF FLATIRON BOOKS, A DIVISION OF MACMILLAN PUBLISHERS. NO PART OF THIS EXCERPT MAY BE REPRODUCED OR REPRINTED WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER.