I started building a team of veterans I knew, people who understood what it meant to hold their nerve when things went sideways. I didn’t pitch them jobs, I pitched them a mission and a place where people actually kept their word. We were good at what we did, which surprised no one who had ever worn a uniform, and word of our reliability spread quickly.
About ten months in, I moved the company into an office with actual windows and a view of the Austin skyline. There were whiteboards covered in notes and a photo of Terrence and Mia on my desk that no longer felt like a shrine. I was reviewing a report when I got a text from a cousin saying that Tyler’s bar deal had collapsed and my parents were blaming everyone.
I stared at the message while the scent of coffee drifted from the break room, feeling a sense of alertness rather than satisfaction. People like my parents never learned from disaster, they only went shopping for a new culprit to blame for their failures. My family had started talking, and I knew they were planning to drag my life through the mud to save their own.