None of the excuses coming to mind were good enough. Vern had always been firm but fair, and Gus knew not to expect any special privileges just because his boss was family.

Stopping in front of the door, he glanced down the hallway. Barry gave him a sympathetic nod, even as he flexed his tattoo-covered arms in warning. Gus opened the office door and stepped inside.

He gulped as he faced his fate.

Sitting in an oversize plush leather recliner, his grandfather had his back to him, the television remote in hand. The man didn’t turn around as the door closed behind him.

Gus cleared his throat. “Vern…”

“Shh,” the older man said. He rewound the studio footage from moments before, and Gus watched his outburst backward on full speed and winced. It would look even worse in slow motion when it became the next social media meme.

His grandfather hit Play and finally turned to face him. It was almost like looking into a mirror, one that showed you your appearance at an older age. The patriarch of the Orosco family barely looked a day over fifty, and his athletic build from being a former college football star was still impressive. With dark hair, only slightly peppered at the sides, and not a wrinkle to be found on his sixty-three-year-old face, he was still sought-after by the ladies. Everyone said Gus was the spitting image of his grandfather, a compliment he’d always appreciated, but their mirrored looks of anguish right now were almost too much.

“Sir, I’m…”

“Just watch,” Vern said, staring at his grandson.

Gus shoved his hands into his pockets and forced his most neutral expression as the footage replayed. A train wreck he’d already witnessed crushing him all over again.

Only instead of the tiny studio screen where he’d had to watch as his ex-fiancée, an infield reporter on location at the Climate Pledge Arena, get engaged to superstar hockey player Vince Fallon, his grandfather’s eighty-inch high-definition flat-screen merely amplified Aileen’s beautiful, breathtaking look of happiness as she’d accepted the lame-ass proposal from a man who didn’t even have real front teeth.

The air in the office seemed to evaporate as he watched her tear up and hug Vince, still in his gear from preseason practice. How the hell could she actually love this dude? He was a thickheaded brawler with the IQ of an eight-year-old. And if her Instagram photos could be trusted, she’d only been seeing Vince for three months, which was three months and two days since she’d called off her engagement to him.