“No thank you, Mother,” I said stiffly. “When I’m ready to find a husband, I’m sure I can do that perfectly well on my own.”
“Good, then we’re in agreement,” she nodded as she stood up and grabbed her phone so she could scan the messages that had come in while she had been issuing her ultimatum. “You may keep your apartment until you make your choice.”
“I’m not getting married,” I said in a staccato voice.
“Payton Gale, do not test me,” my mother said narrowing her eyes as she smoothed her skirt before sitting back down at her desk. “Your willfulness has always been tedious. Why can’t you be more like your brother? He was always so accommodating and willing to help.”
“Of course he was! He was a child!” I cried. “But he’s dead!”
A dark look crossed my mother’s face as she narrowed her eyes and stared silently up at me. I felt my stomach twisting in knots as I held her gaze and willed myself not to look away, but the look on her face frightened me and I couldn’t stop myself from averting my eyes.
“If Daddy were alive, he’d be appalled at what you’re doing,” I said quietly looking back up at her and watching as the words hit their mark. My mother flinched slightly at the mention of my father, and then took a deep breath.
“Well, then it’s a good thing he’s not, isn’t it?” she said staring at me with her steely gaze.
I shook my head as I grabbed my Prada bag off of the floor and headed for the door. I had my hand on the handle when I turned and looked at my mother. She was staring down at an open folder on her desk, but I knew she wasn’t actually reading it because her nails were clicking on the desk in a rhythm that didn’t have a beat. I stared at her for a moment and then said, “You know, it’ll never be too late to admit you’re wrong, Mother.”
When she didn’t respond, I yanked the door open and walked out.
Chapter Three
Dax
“Goddammit, Butler! What the hell were you thinking, you stupid son of a bitch?” I shouted as my General Manager told me how he’d made a deal with the Seahawks and the Lions to trade away our top round draft picks for the next two years in exchange for two linemen and a quarterback of dubious talent.
I had hired Tony Butler after reading about how he’d turned the New Orleans Saints organization around and pulled together a team that won a Super Bowl ring in 2010, but that had been his last victory with the Saints before they’d fallen from grace. The next few years had been rough, and after five years, when Butler hadn’t been able to duplicate his 2010 win, the owners let him go.
I picked him up for a song, but now I was reminded of what Gram had pounded into my brain over the years: you get what you pay for. Now I was annoyed and frustrated because Tony had made the kind of mistakes that were going to force me to have to be involved with Storm business, and that was the last thing I wanted.
“Chill out, Dax,” Tony said as he held up a handful of fat fingers and tried to explain. “I was leveraging our picks so I could build a good team thi
s season, not four seasons from now.”
“You are such a dumbass!” I yelled as I paced the floor of my office. I’d built this office to resemble the one in my penthouse suite because I liked the continuity and wanted to feel at home no matter where I was. I also hated having to make decisions about furniture and all the crap that went with it, so outfitting the new office became much less of a pain in the ass when I simply duplicated things. “Butler, I gave you free rein on the draft so that I wouldn’t have to be involved with any of this shit. You swore on your grandmother’s grave you were going to get us a quarterback who could actually throw a ball and at least one wide receiver who could catch the fucking thing!”
“Look, Dax, it’s not as simple as that,” Tony said nervously licking his lips while he talked. “I had a deal worked out with the Hawks and they promised they’d give us the kid for the first-round picks. It was a sure thing!”
“They were going to trade away Hanson for the first-round picks for two years?” I asked. “You have got to be shitting me.”
“Hand to God, Boss,” Butler said as he played with the ring on his left hand before raising the right one in a limp attempt at swearing he was telling the truth. “We were going to get the kid and then the Lions were going to give us Mitchell and Lee.”
“Oh, fuck you, Butler; now you’re just blowing sunshine up my ass for fun!” I shouted. “There is no way on earth the Lions were going to just give those two away! What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Tony said as he narrowed his eyes. “You ever once stop and entertain the notion that it might be you and that little measly fucker you run with?”
“What the fuck?” I said as I looked out the floor to ceiling glass window that overlooked the neighborhood I grew up in on the South Side. “How is the fact that you are utterly incompetent and making bad deals somehow my fault?”
Once I’d been awarded the team, I’d hauled ass on getting the permits to build the new stadium off 16th Street between 54th and Laramie. I had razed an abandoned warehouse and bulldozed the bare land to make room for a 75,000-seat stadium with underground parking. The city had told me it couldn’t be done, but I’d hired the best engineering firm in the country and they’d proven the city idiots wrong, and so we’d built. This stadium, and the team that played in it, were an impressive feat of engineering, and I was pissed as hell at Tony for screwing things up. I cared about giving the South Side sports fans something they could be proud of even if I was averse to actually running the business.
“Maybe if you hadn’t been in such a rush to build a Super Bowl team and had been willing to give it a few years, this might not have played out the way it did,” Tony said with a controlled fury underlining every word. “And having that little Irish henchman of yours following me around needling me hasn’t helped either.”
“You’re fired, Butler,” I said without turning around, afraid that if I did, I’d go for his throat. It was one thing to talk shit about me, but quite another to drag Finn into it. “You’ll get the severance package in your contract and you’ll have to hold off on joining another team until the end of this season or I’ll sue your ass for violating your non-compete deal. Now get the fuck out.”
“You are going to regret this, you son-of-a-bitch,” he said angrily. He stood up and walked to the door, but stopped short of opening it. “Dax, you’re a smart guy who has been extraordinarily lucky in business, but you need to understand that a football team doesn’t operate on the same principles as your online business did, and you can’t play fast and loose the way you have in the past. There are so many things you are so woefully unprepared to deal with and I don’t envy the next sucker who takes this thankless job and tries to build a winning team out of the shit that you spew.”
“Get the fuck out,” I growled as I turned around and glared at him. “You are a loser who couldn’t do the job, so I’m not sure where you get off evaluating anyone else who might take it on.”
“Fine, but make sure you tell the next candidate that they’re here to fulfill the role of scapegoat for your useless ass,” he shot back. “And fuck you, too. I’ll be fighting the non-compete clause, so look for a letter from my lawyer.”