Chapter 10 Onyx
The knock on the door made me look up, and even though I was on a call, I motioned for Neil to come in.
“Yes, that’s completely understandable,” I said as my little brother Gray was telling me why he’d walked off the practice field this morning.
“But he is your coach, and although you are better than most of the offense combined, you still need to be a team player,” I reminded him as I tapped my pen off the desk.
“No,” I waited. “No, Gray, I told Jett and I’m telling you, mix it up.
” The twins were both volatile and both hot-headed.
They were twenty, so it was allowed, but Gray’s temper was explosive, and as I listened to his fury, I grinned at Neil.
“Oooh, the c word and it’s still morning,” I joked when he cursed.
“You done?” I heard the grumble, and I straightened in my seat.
“Go back tomorrow, eat humble pie, rotate your plays. I’ll get you signed, brother .
. . do you doubt me?” When he said no, I heard his deep breath.
“There we go. Now go to class and keep your temper when Jett bitches at you later, okay?”
After I hung up, I looked at Neil. “Make it quick.”
“You happy with this morning’s result?” he asked me calmly.
Pretending to think about it, I watched him. “Meh.”
“You’re going to push her too far,” he admonished me.
“But yet, she’s still here.”
“Can you stop the bullshit, both of you? You make it an uncomfortable place to work.”
He didn’t expect me to laugh, but I didn’t really care what he expected. “But then what would you spend your time worrying about?”
Neil stood. “A freshman? When the hell is he going to earn for this company?”
When I sign him up to a team early, but that could wait. “She said he has potential, we’ll see.”
“You’re both going to kill each other or drop dead from heart attacks.”
“Don’t be dramatic, a little healthy competition is good for morale.”
Neil’s huff of derision was loud as he headed to the office door. “The competition between you two is not little, and it sure as heck isn’t healthy.”
I merely waited until he had left my office before I opened the email attachment with the contract for Ryan.
I’d already done some digging on his stats from what had been published on his school’s newspaper and blog.
He had potential, but I meant what I said in the boardroom: eighteen-year-old boys changed their minds as often as their mothers replaced their tissue boxes.
He needed to be next-level good and consistent before I had the same level of faith in him as she did.
As I scanned through all the information I had found in such a short time, my gut told me there was more to this than she was saying.
I just needed to know what. Looking up, I checked that the door was closed and then switched out my laptop.
It was a different IP address than the agency’s, and I ensured it was pretty much untraceable.
As I ran background on the boy, I thought about her anger from this morning. Her outburst had been unfiltered and angry. Anyone else, I would have already fired them from my agency, but with her . . . why play into her hands?
The boy and his father were more boring than watching paint dry. As I continued to run checks, my phone rang, and as I answered, I saw Johnathan loitering near my office door.
“Morning,” I greeted Charlie.
“Morning. I got a stoned hockey player and what I thought was a puck bunny on my hands. Turns out she’s an underage kid. Looks like he passed out during his fuck, and she’s not been able to get him off, either way, for a while. Thoughts?”
My eyes narrowed on Johnathan, and I watched as he flinched and looked away. “Where are you?”
“Massachusetts.”
I knew exactly who he had in his hands. “Dump his ass in a cold shower; I don’t care if he drowns. Clean her up, take her to a doctor we trust, and then get her to sign an NDA.”
“Money?”
“How underage?” I asked. “Almost legal or enough to be a sex offender?”
Charlie snorted. “She’s sixteen.”
“Fuck me, it’s a day for teenagers,” I growled. “Parents?”
“Have reported her missing.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I hissed. “Get her the fuck away from him, take her phone, delete whatever social media she’s tweeted, posted, tokked, and burn the fucking thing if you have to.
” I thought about it. “And his too. Find out where they were and who saw them. Apart from him being unconscious on top of her, is she hurt?”
“No. Bit stiff, unlike him.”
Snorting out a laugh at his bad humor, I drummed my fingers off the desk. “Did he actually manage to have sex with her?”
“Not sure, not willing to check her,” Charlie said gruffly. “She’s a bit shaken up now the glamour of last night’s over, but she was a willing participant, if not a misguided one.”
“I didn’t mean you check her, dickhead. Get her checked and tested for everything, and for fuck’s sake, make sure she’s not traumatized. I don’t care if she’s saying she was willing now, she’s sixteen.”
“And him?”
“How stoned? Weed-stoned or coke-stoned?” I asked as I beckoned Johnathan into my office.
“Coke.”
“What a waste of fucking time,” I snapped. “I don’t care what you do with him, but make sure the girl’s okay and not hurt and returned to her parents. He’ll be off the client list by the afternoon.”
“No problem, happy to leave the piece of shit.”
“Tell me when you’re done, and do not leave her.”
“I’ll keep her close,” he said, and then I heard him moving. “Onyx, man,” he said quietly, “she looks like a freaking kid. I don’t know what the fuck he was thinking.”
“She is a kid,” I snapped angrily. “Take care of her, make sure she’s okay. We’ll come back to the asswipe later.”
“Hoping you would say that,” Charlie said before he said goodbye.
Turning my attention to Johnathan, I saw him blanch. “Terminate everything. We no longer represent him. Sponsorships, contracts, branding, all of it — wipe it. He’s gone.”
“If we could discuss this—”
“She’s sixteen.” I reined my temper back. “She’s in high school, he’s twenty-nine. He’s a fucking predator. Get him gone or I will, and you really don’t want me to look too closely at your client list, do you?”
Johnathan stood hastily. “I’ll let you know when it’s all done,” he said before he scurried out of the office.
When he was gone, I called Owen. “Wait four hours before you drop it,” I told him after I gave him the details.
“Make sure everyone knows Saints Sports Management is no longer affiliated, a source from the agency has confirmed that the agency was already terminating their agent’s representative agreement when this happened. ”
“Were you?”
“Don’t question your source, Owen,” I told him. “Four hours, and the exclusive is yours.”
“Will do . . . and is there anything else I need to know?”
I smiled to myself as I heard his anticipation. “Charlie’s on site, he’s with the girl, and he’ll be keeping tabs on the shithead.”
“Perfect,” Owen said, sounding pleased. “Been a while since some Mayhem happened.
“It has indeed.”
“And from the sounds of it, this fuck needs to be reminded of right and wrong.”
“I’ll keep you posted, or Charlie will,” I assured him.
Satisfied that they would each play their parts, I fired off an email to legal and Neil, ensuring that Johnathan the useless dick had started terminating every association we had with the scumbag.
When I got the confirmation that everything was in progress, I returned my attention to Ryan Carmichael.
What had she seen in him? What was I missing?
As I scoured through reports and finances of the Carmichaels, I hesitated over a news report.
Ryan Carmichael Sr. had been in a car accident last year; the car that hit him left the scene, and there was no record of who it was.
Some people were just scum. Carmichael Sr. had sustained injuries, and although not severe, they had greatly impacted his ability to work.
He ended up losing his job, and even though he found new employment, the hit to his earnings was enough to make a significant difference in the household’s income.
I then found the divorce papers where Mrs. Carmichael skipped out of his miserable life and left her son behind.
There was no mention of whoever was in the other car, and from the reports, it was a fifty-fifty on who was the cause of the accident.
Was it someone she knew? Was it her? No, she’d met them both.
You’d remember the person who changed your life.
But still, as I read and reread, I began to lean more to the fact that Angel knew more about this accident than perhaps even the Carmichaels did. Was she doing this out of guilt?
Reading the boy’s stats again, I saw the potential, but at the moment, it was untapped and untested. My own brothers and cousin were so driven and determined on their future that their focus was never in question. I wasn’t seeing any evidence that Ryan was at the same level of determination.
This cemented my belief there was more to it, and I wanted to know what. Of course, I could ask her. But where was the fun in that? Picking up my phone, I called Cooper.
“Hey, what you need?” he asked, and I heard people in the background.
“Need you to dig for me.”
“Hmm, who, why and what for?” I heard him apologize to someone, and that alone made me pause.
“Where are you?”
“Airport.”
“Which one?”
“Does it matter?” I heard his amusement, and I smiled in return. Cooper played his cards close to his chest even more than I did.
“No, sending you a file that tells you the who and the what. I want to know everything there is on the other party.”
“Sure.”
Cooper was a private investigator, a good one, if not a little unorthodox in his methods. But if you could afford him, there was no one better to hire.
“Charlie called,” he told me. “Mayhem?”
“Hmm, I think it’s needed.”
“Needed? Understatement,” he said. “That’s my flight. I’ll have your shit soon.”