Byron shrugged and led the way to the room where we were having the impromptu meeting. “Scouting probably. Guess we’ll see, hmm, mate?” He smiled broadly and opened the door, gesturing me in ahead of him. “After you.”
One more mate from that guy and I was going to rip open my busted knuckles against his smirking mouth.
I walked inside and smiled at the other two men, Doug and Callum, before I extended my hand across the table to Mitchell, who had risen to greet me. “Pleasure to see you again, Mr. Scott.”
We shook hands.
“Same. Call me Mitchell.” The silver-haired man frowned as he took in my face. “What’s this now? Did you have some trouble, son?”
“Just a touch.” Byron produced his phone as if he’d been waiting for this moment and flicked through screens before passing it to Mitchell. “Makes for a good picture though, doesn’t it?”
My fists clenched at my sides. “What is that? What are you looking at?”
All at once, I realized. Natasha’s little photo of our brotherly fight had probably already made the rounds. Which meant Jerry would also have seen it. Or he would soon.
My life was about to get a whole lot stickier.
Mitchell’s salt-and-pepper brows climbed near his hairline. “Simon Kagan? That’s who you fought with?”
“Give me that.” I grabbed the phone before sense kicked in.
Filling the screen was the picture Natasha had taken of me and Simon fresh from our fight. Both of us bleeding.
Lovely.
“You knew who I fought with.” I glared at Byron. “Yet you called it a playground scuffle.”
Byron jerked a shoulder. “I didn’t read all the particulars.”
“Are you able to perform tonight?” Mitchell asked, without bothering to demonstrate an ounc
e of concern for my physical state.
I was still ambulatory, and apparently, that was good enough.
I nodded and dropped Byron’s phone on the table. I hoped the cheap thing shattered.
“This is good. Already you’re making news and you haven’t even been signed.” Mitchell rubbed his silver chin whiskers. The longer I looked at him, the more he seemed like a wizened old wizard. Or maybe a puppet master.
I already had a pair of those. I didn’t need any others.
Byron snatched his phone and pocketed it with his patented sneer. “No reason to get touchy, pal.”
“Have a seat.” Mitchell waved a hand at the few still available around the table. “We’ll have a chat, all of us.”
Swallowing the vitriol hovering on the back of my tongue, I took the seat nearest the door. I had a thing about exits, especially when my stomach was tightening like a dozen snakes.
None of this felt right.
Not just because Byron had set me up with the picture thing either. Mitchell hadn’t assembled all of us just to be kind. He was cooking up an idea, and if it was anything close to what I thought, I was going to be out of there so fast the chairs would spin.
Byron sat down beside Mitchell, his smile wide enough to crack the stingy narrow window with its insincerity. “Thank you so much for wanting to meet with me. Whatever you have in mind, I’m eager for the opportunity. I can assure you there won’t be any such…incidents like this for you to clean up when it comes to me.” He spared me a brief look.
I barely noticed since I was crafting a tiny voodoo doll in the guy’s likeness out of the spare thread dangling from my pants.
My best pair, no less. Gone to rubbish like everything else.
“On the contrary, we can’t buy press like this. There’s an old saying in the biz. The only bad publicity is none.” Mitchell rubbed his hands together, his glee clear.